Just to fill a void in the number of posts recently i thought i`d share a few of the stories that have caught my eye.

Firstly, as i`ve been reading Laura Westra’s book about environmental justice and human rights I was interested to read in De Smog Blog that the tiny Arctic village of Kivalina has joined up with some litigators who previously worked on Tabacco and it’s link to cancer. The parralles are facinating, and hopeful:

From a legal point of view, it is not enough to prove that burning fossil
fuels is damaging to the environment. They must also demonstrate that Big Oil
conspired to lie about their product to the public. They have a lot to work
with.

For instance, ExxonMobil was specifically implicated by the Union
of Concerned Scientists of funding a Big Tobacco-style PR campaign to
misinform the public on climate science.

While the fossil fuel lobby has been highly successful at delaying meaningful regulation around climate change, they may have over-played their hand. By investing so heavily in distorting public debate around climate change, they have given lawyers like Susman and Berman plenty of potential evidence to drag into the light of day.

In a not unconnected development, Alberta is expecting a rapid ramping up of its oil shale extraction. Many of the effected lands are of disputed soverignty, indigenous groups are not seeing the benefits of these hugely distructive schemes.

In better news, solar is expected to achive grid-connected price parity by 2015! In other words, solar power from pv will cost the same per KWh as electricity from the grid. This isn’t the same as having producing power for the same cost as fossil fuels, but it dosent have to be, solar can work without a complex transmission system and such small scale on site uses will make the economics work. Things aren’t exactly bleak for the wind industry either; the only real question is how quickly new manufacturing capacity can be brought online. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry is doing its best to talk up carbon capture and storage.

But weather it’s a new renewable energy paradigme that you are after, or an altered version of fossil fuel power sans carbon emissions, one thing that we can surely agree on is the stupidity of the world bank (world development bank?) subsidising old coal power technology.

Fortunately for our fight against climate change, and for broader struggles against corporate power and state complicity there is a growing base of indipendent media. Notably The Real News Network has just teamed up with Celsias to improve coverage of climate change and related issues. That is exciting as i`m a big fan of both these organisations.

Treehugger today picked up a story about Ontario and Qubec who are jointly moving ahead with a ghg emission cap and trade scheme. The significance of this is twofold, influence and direct impact. In terms of influence we are all hoping that the Canadian govornment will get its act together and put a federal system together; also Canada is one of the few countries that feature highly in the American conciousness so hopefully this will add futher to the pressure on US congressmen to implement a system soon. Lets just hope that in both cases we get progress soon, and we get progress worthy of the title.

In terms of direct impact Ontario and Qubec are only two of 13 provences but they have 60% of the population so it’s more than a purely symbolic scheme. However when Alberta is convered by such a scheme the rest of the world will rest a little easier; there is a lot of very dirty carbon intensive oil shale in Alberta and it needs to stay in the ground.

Thanks to Alex from Radio Ecoshock for the link he left as a comment to my post on an innovative carbon tax that British Columbia is introducing.

Interview on the carbon tax and scientific sensorship.

An interesting policy innovation is taking place in British Columbia (Canada). A carbon tax has been introduced; the level of the tax is modest although increasing to 2012. The interesting part is how the tax works. A charge based on emmissions will be charge on the sale of all fossil fuels. The revenues raised will then be given back to the people in a manner that is both progressive and revenue neutral overall.

The tax incentives aimed at keeping the carbon tax “revenue neutral” will be dispersed as follows: the bottom two personal income tax rates will be cut by 2 per cent in 2008 and 5 per cent in 2009 on the first $70,000 in earnings; effective July 1, the corporate tax rate will drop to 11 per cent from 12 per cent; effective July 1, the small-business tax rate will be cut from 4.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent.

This is one of many kinds of green tax switch that bennefit both the poor and the environment.

Related:
UK Liberal Democratic Party: Green Tax Switch
Globe and Mail Article
Carbon Tax Background and Issues
Reuters

Thanks to Kevin over at De Smog Blog for sending this one over. It looks like the Canadians are showing there feelings on climate policy just as the Australians did recently when they kicked friend of the coal industry John Howard.

A Harris-Decima poll released today shows that the governing Tory party in Canada, under the leadership of Prime Minister Harper is losing popularity quickly due in large part to their performance at the recent United Nation’s global warming conference held in Bali, Indonesia.

The Harper government now finds itself in a statistical tie at 30% with the opposition Liberal Party.

Flick Off is a recently launched climate campaign based in Canada.

There Kyoto Protocol was an important start in the fight against climate change, however there where many inadequacies. One of the most important is the absence of industrialised nations such as the US and Australia from the agreement, this problem–of comprehensive buy-in from the developed world–has been exacerbated by the complete lack of effort made by Canada, a signitory.

Australia has already declared the intention to enact a cap and trade scheme by 2011, recent indications are that this will be bought forward. The US looks likely to join suite soon, if democrats are ellected this is a near certainty, if the Republicans get back in (which seems quite unlikely) then we may yet be completely flicked! Setting the international context for industrialised world consensus on the need for a cap on emissions is vital.  This campaign is
a significant step for helping this to happen in Canada.

The most likely political crisis i see at the negotiations for a post-2012 climate treaty is buy-in from India. China will also be a challenge, but a united front from the developed world is essential. A political roadblock at these negotiations could one of the greatest failures of govronance to ever occur. The question is, is there the momentum required on this issue? At the moment I don’t think so, although we are nearing that point. We need a awakening around the globe to this issue, as we have seen in the US, much of Europe and Australia. Climate  change is a more significant political force but still, i don’t believe it is regarded as a first order challenge such as security or health.