Thanks to my lovely wife for bringing this article to my attention.

I’ve really got nothing to add.   George Monbiot makes the case quite well, and it amounts to this:

If you think Climate Change is questionable; if you think it is some distant crisis; or if you think that a swift and dramatic response is optional for a species that wants a future, WAKE UP and THINK AGAIN!

President Barack Obama laid out a sweeping vision for high-speed rail in the United States this past week.  Obama has already secured $8 billion in funding in the stimulus bill and plans to pursue another $5 billion over the next 5 years.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress provided an excellent summary of the announcement.

In the meantime, Canada’s [non existent] national transportation strategy looks like this:

Yeah, I know, they’ve been really busy planning for our future, haven’t they?

Once the global recession ends, oil prices will resume their inevitable march to record levels which will be heralded with great fanfare in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, but will serve to continue to hamper the economies of all other regions.  Airlines will switch from fighting off bankruptcy due to the recession to fighting off bankruptcy due to rising fuel costs.

In the age of Peak Oil and Climate Change, High Speed Rail must be a national priority in Canada as a means of minimizing short haul flights and large numbers of cars.  We need to outline this vision now and put the systems in place before it’s too late.  Government economic stimulus would be well placed to be working toward that vision.

I fear, however, that what we will see first is >$200 per barrel oil, airlines asking for bailouts, a public clamouring for alternate transportation plans, and a government who says, “Well, you can’t blame us because no one saw this coming.”

There’s been a lot of hype about nuclear power, and the “nuclear renaissance.” Some would have us believe that it’s the only solution to climate change, the cheapest power on earth, the creator of recession proof jobs, and the magic bullet needed to maintain our lifestyle while leaving all the birds, butterflies and bunnies twittering about.

Bull.

The Ontario Clean Air Alliance has a new web site (well, new to me as I’ve just found it via Chris Tindal) called Ontario’s Green Future that specifically talks about nuclear power in Ontario. Check it out.

In their argument, they argue that nuclear gets a free ride that greener sources of power do not get that skews the economics.

• Radioactive waste disposal costs:  The Nuclear Waste Management Organization estimates these costs will be more than $20 billion for existing waste. Taxpayers will foot a major share of this bill, including 100% of any costs over $10 billion.
• Nuclear Liability Costs: No private insurer will insure a nuclear plant against a major accident. Therefore, the government artificially limits the liability of nuclear plant operators to $75 million — a token sum that will be dwarfed by the real costs of even a modest accident.
• Nuclear plant decommissioning: Ontario’s electricity consumers and taxpayers are responsible for 100% of the costs of taking apart and disposing of the nuclear reactors run by privately owned Bruce Power.

But there are plenty of additional arguments against the economics of nuclear as well.

For the Canadian / Ontario case:

• Which taxpayer are you today? Should the contract for new nuclear be awarded to AECL and should the Ontario government successfully contract for a fixed price (which I sincerely doubt anyway, but bear with me) what is the result?  The Canadian taxpayer would be backstopping the construction risk on behalf of the Ontario rate payer.  Now, I don’t know ’bout y’all, but that counts me twice!!  And imagine how that will fly in all those provinces who do not have anything to do with the nuclear cycle.
• Contracts are not always what they appear: Another little tidbit about the Bruce nuclear reactor is the Ontario government signing a take or pay contract with them with the government responsible for the Bruce to Milton transmission line.  The bottom line is that we will pay for their power once it is ready, regardless of whether the transmission line is in place to bring it online.  No other technology gets this advantage.

On a world scale, Joseph Romm at Climate Progress has a great deal to say about the possibility of carrying off this nuclear vision, including one of my favourites, “Exclusive analysis, Part 1: The staggering cost of new nuclear power.”

As an engineer I’m really not as worried about the nuclear waste problem as many others, although I don’t deny it’s a problem. To me it’s merely an engineering/logistics/long term storage problem which, while it can’t be “solved” per se, can be dealt with by the application of enough money over enough time. The problem is that this money * time equation is never included in the rosy picture presented by nuclear enthusiasts.

So if you want to talk nuclear I’m happy to. But the first step in that conversation should be agreement on honest economics.

As a bit of training on what to do and not do during all candidates debates, I have watched a few that were available to me online during this campaign, including watching Elizabeth in the leaders debate.

By far, the best debate I’ve witnessed is the one held in BC by the CBC which they called the X-challenge.

It can be viewed online here.

(WARNING!!! – This post is a spoiler, so if you would rather watch the debate without knowing who won, then you should read no further into this post!)

The setup of the debate was as follows:

Can politicians sell an audience of British Columbia polluters on their green platforms smack in the middle of an economic downturn?

Wednesday, Oct. 8 at 7:30 p.m. ET and 10:00 p.m. ET Mark Kelley moderated The X Challenge, a 90-minute debate between four representatives of the main national parties on issues related to the environment. The twist? The audience, made of 100 self-described polluters with different political leanings, voted in real time on who won the debate!

The four participants: Lorne Mayencourt of the Progressive Conservatives, Ujjal Dosanjh of the Liberals, Michael Byers of the New Democratic Party and Adriane Carr of the Green party.

Adriane Carr is, of course, a very able representative of the Green Party, and I watched the debate originally to see her in action.

The 100 person audience of decided voters was chosen based on the current polling in BC, with 40 Conservative voters, 26 NDP voters, 20 Liberal voters and 14 Green voters.

The challenge was to see whether the four party reps could sway enough voters to increase their numbers, and the topic of this debate was entirely on environmental platforms and of course, economic platforms since these are so interrelated.

There were 5 questions posed by audience members with the audience voting on the best response after each of the first 4, and then a final vote for the winner of the whole debate.

The results?  An overwhelming victory for Adriane Carr, achieving a final vote of 47%

Way to go Adriane!!!

The Newmarket-Aurora Conservative candidate, Lois Brown, continued to spread the misinformation campaign of the Harper government at an all-candidates debate last week.  This is no surprise, but I felt it necessary to make the point.  Again…

The Harper government is misleading the Canadian public regarding Climate Change in two important ways:

1. While the Green Party, the Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and most of the rest of the world are using 1990 as the baseline year from which to set targets for cuts in emissions, the Conservatives are insistent on using 2006 as the baseline.  In itself, this would not be a problem so long as they always state the baseline year and people always understand the difference, but neither of these is true.  The Conservatives claim a target of 20% cuts by 2020 but they fail to mention the baseline year. Converted to a 1990 baseline, their target is actually at only 3% below 1990 levels.For clarity, here are the actual targets for 2020 of each party…-> 1990 baseline = 608 Megatonnes (source: Vision Green)
   -> 2006 baseline = 736 Megatonnes (estimated: I’ve seen from 721 to 800)

   -> Green Party = 30% below 1990 = 425 MT
   -> NDP = 25% below 1990 = 456 MT
   -> Liberal Party = 20% below 1990 = 486 MT
   -> Conservative Party = 20% below 2006 = 3% below 1990 = 589 MT

   And yet they make the claim to have the most aggressive targets?  Huh?

2. While the Green Party, the Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois and most of the rest of the world are committed to actual cuts in emissions, with the targets as stated above, the Conservatives insist on so-called “intensity targets” which is the emissions per GDP or per unit of production.  This is misleading math, and could still allow overall emissions to rise.For example, consider a tar sands project extracting 100 units of oil and emitting 100 units of CO2.  Assume the production rises by 50% (which both the Conservative Party and the Alberta government support) while the per unit emissions are cut 20%, the result will be 150 units of production and 120 units of CO2.  This would be an increase in actual emission levels by 20%.Intensity targets do not work for actual emission cuts unless they are stated in the context of the expected growth in output.  The only intensity targets that are at all meaningful are per capita emissions, and even these can be skewed if you fail to account for population growth.

Based on these two points, the Conservative Party is either willfully misleading the Canadian public, or they are really bad at math.

Take your pick.

If you choose the former, ask yourself about the honesty and integrity of our Prime Minister.

If you choose the latter, ask yourself about his supposed credentials as an economist.

While istening to a podcast from the National Post this morning about the upcoming leaders debates, I was curious about one of the comments from a political science professor Dr Brooke Jeffrey from Concordia University.

She stated that the Green Party is “not running candidates in, I think, over 50 seats.”

So, doing a bit of quick internet search, which the good Dr Jeffrey is obviously incapable of doing, reveals that the Green Party is in fact running in 303 of the 308 ridings in the country.  It then took me about 5 minutes to get confirmation from the party.

Further, I found out that no party has a full slate, and I am referencing the CBC for that.

OK, technically the NDP have 308 but one resigned after the registration deadline over the controversy of skinny dipping with someone he shouldn’t.  The Liberals have 307, deciding not to run against Elizabeth May in Central Nova and the Conservatives have 307, deciding not to run against André Arthur, an independent who is seeking re-election Quebec’s Portneuf-Jacques Cartier riding.

Interesting stuff.  But my point here is that if this is the state of knowledge by a political science professor, a person expected to have in depth knowledge about the political choices available to Canadians, it is small wonder that explaining the necessarily complex policy to address an extremely complex issue like Climate Change, with it’s far reaching economic implications, is difficult.  Especially so in the forced 30 second sound bytes demanded by our mainstream media.

Elizabeth May was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of supporters at the Hockey Hall of Fame as her Green Train arrived in Toronto on Wednesday September 24.

The trip, plus the fact tha the via train was hours late, was made in part ot highlight one of the central theme’s of the Green Party’s campaign which is the dire need to invest in rail infrastructure in Canada.

Doing so would address both climate change / greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector, as well as provide a system for travel that is less dependant on depleting oil resources that our current method of moving ourselves and our products, cars and truck.

Here’s the speech in it’s entirety.  Sorry, had to break into two parts due to YouTube limitations.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s a bit of an odd name (in comparison to Richard Heinberg’s book, “PowerDown”), but let’s hope the idea catches on for the latter half of the election campaign.  Help to spread this far and wide.

Click here to view the embedded video.

FYI, in this report you’ll note that one woman makes it clear that we don’t need cap & trade, we don’t need a carbon tax, we need BOTH.

And there is only one federal party with BOTH in the platform.  Vote Green on October 14.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thomas Homer-Dixon wrote what I thought was an excellently worded article in today’s Globe & Mail.

In response were comments such as this:

JD Strong from Oakville, Canada writes: I’m not willing to sacrifice my freedom of choice for environmentalist fear mongering. Especially after the brutal winter we had and the cool summer we’re having now.

Environmentalism is an excuse to impose state control and planning in place of individual freedom. It extends to every aspect of our lives: cars, lightbulbs, health, work, transportation, food, clothing… everything.

Keep your laws off my freedom.

This is clearly someone for whom “environmentalism” is a bad word.  Everything even remotely associated with the word must, by definition, be bad.  He/she is clearly pre-disposed to being against everything that those “loony environmentalists” support.

This is not to say that there are no environmentalists with whom I disagree, either on goals or methods or both.  There are actually many.  But heck, I’m struggling to come up with a single label for any group of people which I look at with such revulsion that I believe they are incapable of even a single good idea.  Not one.  I believe that even the most radical groups out there have reasons for their opinions, and I would choose to hear them before I dismiss them.  It is just not in me to be that close minded.  I’ve even found myself agreeing with Stephen Harper from time to time.  (George W. Bush, not so much, but I’d never say it’s impossible!)

Now I’m certain that JD Strong from Oakville, Canada likely has some strongly held opinions about the level of tax burden in Canada/Ontario/Oakville, and perhaps he/she could make some very strong cases as to how that money is spent by the particular level of government.  Fair enough.  He/she is entitled to those opinions.  We may disagree, but that’s what makes a healthy democracy, and I’d be willing to listen and consider the points.

But just for the sake of discussion, if I agree to stipulate to all of his/her points on both the size of the tax burden and the spending priorities, I still cannot come to grips with why anyone argues with the central philosophy of modern environmentalism (and for that matter the central philosophy underlying Green Party policy) which, in the words of Homer-Dixon, is to “tax things we want to discourage, such as pollution and resource waste, not things we want to encourage, like income, employment and investment.”

I will admit, this has to be my single biggest internal struggle with my involvement in politics.  This philosophy seems to me to be so obvious, so in-line with the long term interests of our society, that I can’t quite come to terms with how anyone can argue against it.

Even if you are one who thinks Climate Change is bunk.  Even if you believe that Peak Oil is a myth.  Fine, for this discussion only I will stipulate that.  Now please tell me how this philosophy, placing the tax burden squarely on the things we want to discourage, does not make sense?

And yet people continue to reject the idea out of hand and Canada has exactly one political party which holds this philosophy as a basic premise of economic policy.