In the recent New Brunswick election, an unremarkable engineering activity apparently took front and centre: hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, popularly known as fracking.
greenhouse gas emissions
July 30, 2013
2:00AM
When pitching new programs, politicians love their 'dedicated' funds: highway trust funds, housing trust funds, environmental protection funds, wildlife-protection funds, and so on. Most recently, under AB 32, California politicians partly sold the program on the basis of all the good that could be done with Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds raised through the state's cap-and-trade program.
April 17, 2013
2:00AM
Carbon taxes are once again dominating the discussion over energy policy in Alberta, where Environment Minister Diana McQueen has proposed a sharp hike to Albertas carbon levy. Presently, large emitters in Alberta are required to reduce greenhouse gas emission intensity (that is, emissions per unit of production) by 12 per cent, or face a levy of $15 for every tonne they come up short. The new proposal would hike the emission intensity target to 40 per cent, and raise the levy to $40. Nice round numbers, to be sure, but extremely ambitious ones.
March 18, 2013
3:00AM
Thomas Mulcair, federal NDP leader and Leader of the Opposition, has recently been berating Canadas environmental performance as he travels in the United States: In the U.S. people know how to read, he said. They know that Canada is the only country that has withdrawn from Kyoto. They know that the Conservatives cant possibly meet their Copenhagen targets [on greenhouse gas emissions] precisely because of the oilsands. They have to stop playing people for fools. In another presentation, Mr.
November 17, 2011
2:00AM
The European Commission was wrongheaded when, in October, it singled out oil extracted from Canada's tar sands' by proposing a higher carbon-emissions value for it than for other sources of fossil fuel.