Climate Change / Emissions

US should share oilsands burden:Paul Martin
December 14, 2009
CP

TORONTO — Environment Minister Jim Prentice appears to be in agreement with former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin on who should pay for the environmental costs of Alberta's oilsands energy.

Martin has been quoted as saying the U.S. should shoulder some of Canada's carbon emissions burden because it's the chief user of energy from the oilsands.

Prentice, who is at the Copenhagen climate summit, says if Americans buy Canadian oil, the environmental costs should be absorbed on the U.S. side of the border.

Canada ranks low on climate change report card
By Kelly Cryderman, Calgary Herald
December 14, 2009

COPENHAGEN — Canada ranks just ahead of Saudi Arabia when it comes to progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, says an annual climate change performance report looking at 57 high-emitting countries.

"Looking at the emissions level of the ranked countries, the United States, Canada and Russia place very poorly," says the report, to be officially released as global climate change talks resume in Copenhagen Monday.

Ontario, Quebec say they won’t shoulder oilsands burden
By Kelly Cryderman, Calgary Herald
December 13, 2009

COPENHAGEN — Delegations from Ontario and Quebec wasted no time before differentiating their position from the federal government’s after arriving Sunday at the climate change conference in Copenhagen — declaring they weren’t going to carry higher emission-reduction burdens for the sake of oilsands expansion in the Western provinces.

Ingmar Lee writes:

In the context of all the hot-air being emitted at Copenhagen, I offer this
piece:

I've just read a fantastic piece of historic Canadian literature, (The
Silence of the North) -a memoir by pioneer trappers-wife, Olive A.
Fredrickson, as told to author Ben East. She reminisces from her experiences
in the north of Alberta and BC in the 1920's when all was wild up there. Her
travels in the then wilderness took her all through the area around Fort
McMurray, now the epicentre of the Alberta Tar Sands planetary blight.

Burn a Tree to Save the Planet? The Crazy Logic Behind Biomass

By Joshua Frank, AlterNet. Posted December 8, 2009.

It might seem crazy that anyone would think the incineration of wood and its byproducts are a green substitute for toxic fuels such as coal. Think again.

Fire up your chainsaw and cut down a tree. Not so you can decorate it for the Christmas holiday; so you can set it on fire to help combat global warming. That's right, burn a tree to save the planet. That's the notion behind biomass, the new (yet ancient) technology of burning wood to produce energy.

Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak

Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol

* John Vidal in Copenhagen
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009

COP15: A Haitian delegation during second-day session at the Bella center in Copenhagen

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images

Big Greens Criticized for Climate Compromise

Tuesday 08 December 2009
by: Joshua Frank, t r u t h o u t |

All eyes are on the United Nations Climate Change conference talks that kick off in Copenhagen, Denmark, this week. Known as the COP15 summit, the international negotiations will center on cap-and-trade and offset schemes to combat global warming, not a global carbon tax or strict regulation that are being called for by some sectors of the climate change movement.

Cap and Fade
By JAMES HANSEN
Published: December 6, 2009
New York Times

AT the international climate talks in Copenhagen, President Obama is expected to announce that the United States wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to about 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. But at the heart of his plan is cap and trade, a market-based approach that has been widely praised but does little to slow global warming or reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It merely allows polluters and Wall Street traders to fleece the public out of billions of dollars.

'Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets'
Steffen Böhm and Siddhartha Dabhi (eds)

The book can be downloaded for free at http://mayflybooks.org/?page_id=194

The book will be launched in Colchester, UK, and Lund, Sweden (near Copenhagen); at both events some free copies of the book will be available:

The Old Library at Colchester Town Hall, West Stockwell Street, Colchester, UK Wednesday 9 December 4-6pm The event is free and open to all http://mayflybooks.org/?p=313

Leaders from the Global South protest against WWF International in Geneva

First action of the Social and Climate Justice Caravan

In front of the international head quarters of WWF (World Wildlife Fund) in
Gland-Geneva, participants of the Social and Climate Justice Caravan made
their first protest action. Delegates from farming organisations, indigenous
and fisher folk from the South denounced the greenwashing carried out by WWF