With the visit of one of America’s top climate change crusaders, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has inked a deal to adopt some of the measures that California is putting in place.
Namely, Ontario will adopt the clean fuel standard, which requires companies to track the carbon footprint of (most of) the lifecycle of the fuel.
In other words, heavy oil from say, the Alberta tar sands, which require natural gas to be burned to extract and then a much more energy intensive and emitting refining process, would not make the grade.
This is an excellent step.
Where McGunity missed the grade, of course, is in adopting California’s tough vehicle fuel efficiency standards.
In my mind, there is only one measure that really counts for vehicles. That is emissions per passenger-kilometre. Using this standard, we could see that electric light rail, diesel commuter rail (like GO) and buses all top the list and cars of any stripe are near the bottom.
All this talk of fuel quality and personal vehicle fuel economy is great stuff, and any improvements in that area are appreciated, but to get to the bottom of the problem we need a transportation plan which gets people from where they are to where they need to be, quickly, conveniently, and at the lowest emissions per passenger-kilometre that we can.
