We must be close to a turning point in investing in the environment, because the budget tabled today couldn’t do much less.

A token $25 million for the next four years allocated to renewable energy in the forestry sector shows that this government sees renewable energy technologies as “boutique” experiments, not the mainstream solutions that they are in other parts of the world — and, more importantly, what they need to be in Canada.

If the government is going to live up to its election promise of generating 90 per cent of its electricity from sources that don’t produce greenhouse gas pollution by 2020, we will need a ten-fold increase in renewable power in the next 10 years. Currently, 77 per cent of our electricity comes from “non-emitting sources” (defined by the government as large hydro, nuclear, carbon capture and storage and renewables) — but to close that gap on a national scale will require a serious ramp-up of investment in renewable power. New nuclear or carbon capture and storage cannot be rolled out in a meaningful way in only 10 years, in spite of the $1.5 billion allocated to them in the last two years.

By contrast to Canada’s inaction, see China to unveil multibillion-dollar renewable energy plan

More:

Canadian Press: Environment, arts get short shrift in new budget

Canwest: Wind energy loses out

Canwest: Renewable energy generates new spending – No mention of climate change commitments to developing countries, despite endorsement in throne speech

Tim Weis’ Pembina blog

The companies who manufacture solar PV in the UK have shown that putting solar panels on all available building surfaces would generate more electricity in a year, under typical cloudy British skies, than the entire electricity consumption of our energy-profligate nation. Some fashion accessory.

Of course, just a fraction of that area of buildings would suffice because we would want to mix and match renewable technologies – large and small, onshore and offshore – so matching loads and compensating for the fact that solar generates by day and not by night.

Monbiot is holding firm:

Once again I am a traitor to the cause, a corporate sell-out, a dangerous maverick who has gone over to the dark side. My column this week on feed-in tariffs provoked the same sort of charges that were levelled against me when I first came out against biofuels in 2004. We’ve now seen how that’s panned out. When other greens wake up to the amazing waste of money and opportunities this scheme represents, I think the feed-in tariff scandal will go the same way.

One of the more sophisticated responses came from my old sparring partner Jeremy Leggett, chairman of the installation company Solar Century. He managed to ignore most of my arguments, but never mind. Here is the fork he is impaled on. Either solar photovoltaic (PV) power in the United Kingdom is, as he claims, a cheap, efficient technology, or it isn’t. If it is, why should we be subsidising it to the tune of 41p per kilowatt hour? If it needs this subsidy, it is neither cheap nor efficient. If it doesn’t need it, the feed-in tariffs are even more of a swindle than I thought.

On April 1st the government introduces its feed-in tariffs. These oblige electricity companies to pay people for the power they produce at home. The money will come from their customers, in the form of higher bills. It would make sense, if we didn’t know that the technologies the scheme will reward are comically inefficient.

…

We have plenty of ambient energy, but it’s not to be found on people’s roofs. The only renewables policy that makes sense is to build big installations where the energy is – which means high ground, estuaries or the open sea – and deliver it by wire to where people live. But the government’s scheme sloshes money into places where resources are poor and economies of scale impossible.

More Monbiot v Distributed Renewables here and here

Former Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier is publicly defending climate change “skepticism” and argues “What is certain is that it would be irresponsible to spend billions of dollars and impose overly stringent regulation to solve a problem when we are still far from understanding its gravity.” Bernier is no longer the Conservative’s Foreign Minister but remains an MP. He goes on to condemn “the alarmism that has often characterized the issue.” In a piece submitted to La Presse he says in part:

“…with each passing week we see the wisdom of the government’s moderate position … since December, a debate has broken out in the media over the science of warming, a debate that had been stifled due to political correctness … the numerous errors by the IPCC add to alternative theories of warming that have been put forward over the years.

We now recognize that it’s possible to be a “skeptic,” or at least to keep an open mind about nearly all critical aspects of the warming theory.

This is a position that is gaining dangerous traction in the culture war politics driven by the Sarah Palin wing of North American conservatism. Coincidentally the Washington Post published an excellent editorial today pointing out that mistakes have been “trivial” and pushing back against the assault on rationality and science. Their opening:

THE EARTH is warming. A chief cause is the increase in greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. Humans are at least in part responsible, because the oil, gas and coal that we burn releases these gases. If current trends persist, it’s likely that in coming decades the globe’s climate will change with potentially devastating effects for billions of people.

Contrary to what you may have read lately, there are few reputable scientists who would disagree with anything in that first paragraph. Yet suddenly we’re hearing that climate change is in doubt and that action to combat it is unlikely. What’s going on?

…. Politicians nonetheless have seized on both the trivial mistakes and the complexity of the science to cast doubt on the underlying and unrefuted truth of human-caused greenhouse gas accumulation. In many cases, it is hard to know whether they are being obtuse or dishonest, and hard to know which would be worse.

Bernier claims he didn’t pass his letter through government or party channels. A spokesperson for Environment Minister Jim Prentice claims that “the MP is expressing his personal views,” “which do not reflect the position of the ministry or government.” Bernier is certainly a bit of a maverick but this is not an off-the-cuff comment but instead a written submission on a hot button topic from a member of a government famous for its party and message discipline.

The emphasis on “alarmism” is definitely message discipline of one sort. Conspiracy or cock-up? We’ll see how aggressively the Harper Conservatives repudiate Bernier.

An English translation of Bernier’s piece:

During the conference in Copenhagen last December, Canada was fiercely denounced by environmental groups. They accused our government of attempting to block a deal because he was not ready to sign anything. Critics have again emerged in late January when the Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, has announced new targets for more modest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Each passing week, however, confirms the wisdom of the moderate position of our government. Since December, the debate on the scientific basis of climate, stifled for years by political correctness, finally broke out openly in the media. The numerous recent revelations about the errors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) add to alternative theories that have been put forward for many years.

We realize that it is possible to be “skeptical” or at least keep an open mind on almost all crucial aspects of the theory of global warming. For example, although no one denies that there has been warming over the past hundred years, there is not consensus among scientists as to its scope.

During the period when the concern became the strongest about global warming, that is to say during the last decade, well … temperatures have been increasing! The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, assumed to be the cause of global warming according to the official, however, is still rising. Very serious scientists believe, however, we underestimate the influence of the sun and other factors that have nothing to do with CO2 in climate change studies.

Mojib Latif, a German researcher associated with the IPCC, which supports most of the warming theory, said last autumn that the world might even know two decades of cold temperatures before the climate starts to warm up. A trend that no model had yet to interview now. But the same models, it seems, can predict how many degrees the planet will warm by the end of the century …

This is only one of the “certainties” propagated by the proponents of global warming on which there is in fact no scientific consensus.

What is certain is that it would be irresponsible to spend billions of dollars and impose overly stringent regulation to solve a problem when we are still far from understanding its gravity. The alarmism that has often characterized the issue is no longer appropriate. Canada has reason to be cautious.

Note that Mojib Latif is very tired of being misused by climate skeptics and publicly repudiates such misuse of his research.

Bernier’s article for La Presse

Canadian Press: Bernier comes out swinging of behalf of climate change sceptics

Even among those that grok the necessity of the zero carbon vision, Gates’ emphasis on innovation and next-gen nuclear is not an uncontroversial prescription. The Breakthrough boys like it though.

Einstein famously said that to go on doing the same thing and expect a different result, is the definition of insanity. Climate campaigners immersed in rethinking after the 2009 Copenhagen Conference need to keep calm and carry on [1] but not in the same way.

Governments and campaigners both face a common problem: how to generate change and political space for change. The conventional science-UN politics-media process isn’t going to get them there – but other strategies could….

Steps In A New Strategy

Government and non government campaigns and communications strategies
could involve the following.

1. Create political space for necessary practical changes (eg renewables, efficiency, waste, different transport or food) by matching asks and offers to values, and then capturing and utilising the consequent supportive opinions (VBCOP).

2. Create ‘discourses’ and dialogues around those changes – distributive, efficacy and risk issues for example – to make news.

3. Do not try to sell ‘big picture’ Pioneer conceptions to Prospector and Settlers eg ‘a low carbon society’: nobody was ever ‘sold’ a high carbon consumer society, it just happened and we embraced the benefits.

4. Focus much less attention on the international climate talks, and much more to making changes ‘at home’ (eg domestic renewables, electric cars, green fashions), and demonstrating that these are happening

5. Educate the media about science and uncertainty and the basis of the construction of the consensus on climate change – best done as a peer to peer exercise

6. Educate relevant scientists (and politicians and campaigners) about the basics of reflexive communications – framing, heuristics and values for example – so for example, they stop interpreting their progress or lack of through what the media says about opinion polling

7. Government bodies and science institutions should give more scientific-policy attention to responses to impacts which are already happening (eg sea level rise, season change, acidification of the seas, melting glaciers) and explain these in terms which resonate with values, rather than publicising the results of scenarios and models which are trying to push the outer limits of ‘climate prediction’ (where uncertainties are greatest).

8. Within the UN science-politics system, disengage the outer limits of science from the politics and stop politicians from using the elimination of uncertainty as a metric for taking political action.

9. Campaigners and politicians, and in particular their communications planners and social marketers, need to understand the dynamics of change in terms of values groups.

10. When talking about the ‘big picture’ of climate change to mixed audiences is unavoidable, use frames that are universal in terms of values. For example ‘being a parent’ (see Campaign Strategy Newsletter No 50 – ‘It’s The Children Stupid’).

No, this is not a flashback to one of the best Atari games of the 1980s. Let me explain:

… Astronomers have detected nearly a thousand large-scale “near Earth asteroids” (NEAs) that could potentially hit Earth, some within the next 50 years. One, known as Apophis , measures thousands of feet across and has a one-in-43,000 chance of striking earth between 2036 and 2069. NASA scientists say a collision with an NEA could result in dramatic climate changes that would threaten global food supply and could lead to the “possible breakdown of society.” Imagine we got news that a collision wasn’t just possible, but the most likely scenario given astronomers’ best predictions — would we attack their credibility and challenge their credentials? Or would we demand that our governments take the threat seriously and engage the best experts we’ve got to develop solutions, if we knew that preventative action might cost a few percentage points of our national GDP but would avoid massive tragedy and economic ruin, while ensuring future quality of life on Earth?

LEED certification is actually a North American thing but the Mayor defies anyone to name a better project anywhere and is claiming greenest in the world status: “With today’s LEED platinum certification, the Olympic village medalled in platinum, becoming the greenest neighbourhood in the world.”

Tim Cole, of the US Green Building Council granted the certification saying that “Even more so than single buildings, community developments of this type and scale require an unwavering commitment to integrated design and development processes.”

More:

Canada Green Building Council

Vancouver Sun: Athletes’ Village ‘greenest in North America’

City of Vancouver

Matt Price at Environmental Defence thinks the

“…choice of the word ‘conniving’ is interesting, since it implies others see Canada as less than honest when trying to convince them we are doing our fair share. Worse is that the Harper government has put forward even weaker targets than the ones that led to this comment in the first place.”

All quite true as far as the Canadian government’s actions are concerned. But we need to scrutinize all the critical international players and “conniving” is too subtle a word for China’s own actions in Copenhagen.

We need to guard against falling into simplistic storylines that distort what’s happening.  There’s a prominent, politically correct, storyline out there that it’s all come down to rich countries (or mainly the Obama administration) screwing over developing ones.

But if there’s one thing that Copenhagen showed clearly, it’s that we have begun a new era of geopolitics. China, like the US, is indispensable to climate progress. China is now the world’s biggest carbon emitter.

China is also now the world’s biggest player in solar and wind turbines. China’s leaders have unquestionably begun a full-scale program to dominate the global clean energy economy.

But China gutted the Copenhagen deal. Openly insulting Obama and other world leaders, insisting that global objectives be eliminated from any text and that carbon reduction commitments not be included.

The unflinching Mark Lynas wrote a first-hand account of sitting through the final negotiations. Really a must-read. Here’s a snippet:

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country’s foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.

Shifting the blame

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China’s representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. “Why can’t we even mention our own targets?” demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil’s representative too pointed out the illogicality of China’s position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord’s lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak “as soon as possible”. The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.