TalkClimateChange

Continued as part of Daryl’s Urban vs Rural series.
Today I will look at mitigation strategies advanced as lifestyle changes to mitigate energy consumption, and how lifestyle options in urban centres fail to translate well to rural areas.
I’ll continue to use the BC Carbon Tax Plan as a template with choices advanced under the 2008 […]

My childhood was spent living and working on farms in Northern Canada, followed by living in some of the most populous cities in North America - so I can draw some contrasts between the urban and rural lifestyles.
Mark recently wrote here that over 50% of us world-wide now live in urban areas, and as […]

Following the discussion on the Stern report’s projections for the economic cost / benefit of tackling climate change, I’d like to introduce a new perspective: The cost of climate change avoidance is irrelevant, since most of today’s avoidance schemes are wholly ineffective anyway.
I make this assertion following UK treasury projections that the “green levy” on […]

Editor’s note: Daryl is actually feeling fine - we checked after reading this..
I’ve just read an article on MSN / Sympatico called “The cheapest way to save the Earth“, which actually made sense to me - and it is about lifestyle changes!
Now a caveat: I don’t actually agree with it all, but I do […]

Philip Pullman, author of the excellent “His Dark Materials” trilogy, was recently quoted as saying with respect to energy and carbon rations, “We should have a fixed limit and if you use it all up in October, then tough, you shiver for the rest of the year“.  That doesn’t sound so good, but since […]

For some reason the announcement yesterday that George Bush planned to give a speech making new US commitments to tackle climate change completely failed to register with me. So familiar have I become with grand political statements on climate change that instead of eagerly awaiting the news I instead forgot all about it until reading […]

Al Gore, new thinking on the climate crisis

Al Gore’s latest 30 minute slide-show is now available on You Tube, with a predictable range of comments from You Tube viewers.
Let us know what you think?

It’s worse than we thought, say scientists Roger Pielke (University of Colorado), Prof Tom Wigley (National Centre for Atmospheric Research) and Christopher Green (McGill University) in a paper published in the journal Nature this week.

Following our recent commentary on the somewhat creative approach to UK greenhouse gas emissions measurement, where we asked Is Sir Humphrey Appleby In Charge of Climate Change Policy?, we greeted the recent announcement by the British Government of a 2% reduction in UK emissions with some caution.
Following release of the figures, environment secretary Hilary […]

A group of three environmental groups has launched a frivolous and money draining lawsuit against the United States Government about the missing of deadlines to place the Polar Bear (Ursus Martimus) on the endangered species list.
The plaintiffs; the National Resources Defence Council, the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace. The basis for the claim […]

Last week I wrote of the need to invest tax revenues from motorists into the poor public transport infrastructure which exists in many countries today - an issue set to become a critical developmental factor as both population and our need for mobility grows. Following some brief discussion on the rights and wrongs of […]

Fans of the British Television Series “Yes Minister” will be familiar with the trials of Government Minister Jim Hacker at the hands of dastardly civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby, frequently demonstrating the futility of promoting progress in a government bureaucracy. A typical exchange between the confounded Hacker and slippery Sir Humphrey plays out as […]

It seems to be environmental assessment season around the world, with two major new reports during the last two weeks - the OECD Environmental Assessment and the National Academies Transportation Research Board report.
We all know that thousands of reports are written every year, many are for policymakers and are accepted as the views of experts […]

Much ado has been made about the UK’s latest budget presented by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling last week.
Green groups universally panned Darling for failing to take a hard line on environmental issues, and particularly for failing to implement a 2 pence tax increase on petrol.
“This was billed as the greenest budget ever. But […]

There has been a general misunderstanding of modern economics running rampant through the global warming debate, and that is the assigning some sort of evil personality to the oil corporations across the globe.
This is a side effect of two popular social platforms; the Populists who believe all big business is self-serving and conspires […]