BANFF – Skeptics of human-influenced global warming or those who say we can simply adapt to climate change are ignoring basic physics and many years of scientific study, says a research scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada.

              “Geologists should be leaders in recognizing the problem” of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, James White told the Canadian Prairie and Northern Section (CPANS) Air & Waste Management Association’s annual conference. “Human adaptation is not guaranteed” to the rapid climate change now occurring, he said in a talk titled “Geological and Modern Evidence Relating to the Climate Change Controversy.”

              The Earth’s atmosphere…

BANFF – Policy uncertainty around climate change has left corporations “blindfolded in a closet” in terms of future spending and investors fearful, says an economist at the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy (ISEEE).

              Even though business is struggling with regulatory and policy uncertainty, companies that fail to change their spending and products in response to climate change won’t succeed, Michal Moore, a senior fellow at ISEEE at the University of Calgary, told the Canadian Prairie and Northern Section (CPANS) Air & Waste Management Association’s annual conference.

              Policy makers “(are) arguably least prepared to deal with climate change . .…

BANFF – Businesses should be prepared for tougher domestic regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, says a senior Environment Canada official.

              “If you think CO₂ regulations are onerous now, be prepared for . . . tougher and tougher regulations,” with carbon prices expected to reach $65 per tonne by 2018, said Louise Metivier, director of air emissions priorities for Environment Canada’s Environmental Stewardship Branch. She was speaking at the annual Canadian Prairie and Northern Section (CPANS) Air & Waste Management Association’s annual conference, “Turning Down the Heat on Climate Change,” held in Banff.

              Canada’s regulatory system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions will apply…

VANCOUVER – Canada’s forest industry has significantly cut its greenhouse gas emissions and is committed to becoming “carbon neutral” by 2015, says the head of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPCA).

            But the Canadian forest industry’s drive to become carbon neutral – without relying on carbon offset projects or buying carbon credits – is being undercut by rapid deforestation in other countries and by illegal wood suppliers, Avrim Lazar, FPCA’s president and CEO, told GLOBE 2008.

            Merely stopping pollution, conserving energy and talking about sustainable development “aren’t enough” to reduce global GHGs by the amount needed to avoid…

VANCOUVER – Provinces and states are driving policy on greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions in North America, but federal jurisdictions in both Canada and the U.S. are expected to play a greater role, experts told a GLOBE 2008 session.

            In Canada, the federal government is committed to publishing regulations this fall, lawyer Barbara Hendrickson, a partner with McMillan Binch Mendelsohn LLP in Toronto, told a session on “Climate Change Policy & Regulatory Trends in North America.” There is “quite a bit of uncertainty” how the federal regulations will fit with provincial regulations, although most observers believe Ottawa’s plan “is copying largely the Alberta…

VANCOUVER – British Columbia wants in on a growing global carbon trading market the province views as a “place of opportunity,” not a “place of fear,” the head of B.C.’s Climate Action Secretariat told GLOBE 2008.

            B.C. also realizes the urgent need for action on climate change, after seeing “some of the most prominent evidence” in the mountain pine beetle epidemic that has devastated lodgepole pine forests, Graham Whitmarsh told a session on “Global Carbon Market – Moving Forward.” The beetle epidemic “is symptomatic of what will happen on a global basis if we don’t address this (climate change),” he said.

            The…

VANCOUVER – Arguments can be made for either a carbon tax or a global carbon trading system or a combination of both as the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, experts told GLOBE 2008.

            But all the experts agreed on one thing at GLOBE’s closing town hall on “Carbon: Tax or Trade:” The world must somehow put a price on carbon to achieve significant cuts in emissions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

            “Whichever way we go, the atmosphere can no longer be ‘free,’” said Mark Jaccard, professor of the School of Resource and Environmental Management at SimonFraserUniversity.…

VANCOUVER – Carbon capture and storage (CCS) will become an integral part of “responsible” oilsands development and a key technology in Canada for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, some experts say.

            But other experts, at a GLOBE 2008 session on “CO₂ Capture and Storage,” say CCS technology faces significant cost and regulatory challenges, and will initially be used only where it makes economic sense – for enhanced recovery of conventional oil and unconventional gas.

            “The potential for CCS to play a significant role (in reducing CO₂) emissions) is very real,” Gerry Protti, EnCana Corp.’s executive vice-president of corporate relations and president,…

VANCOUVER – Buildings in Canada are responsible for about 35 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, representing the single greatest opportunity to reduce emissions, GLOBE 2008 heard.

            Emissions from commercial buildings could be reduced to 1990 levels by 2030, by taking a best-practices approach that uses building materials that are readily available and affordable and have a 10-year payback period or less, said Jonathan Westeinde, chair of the Advisory Group for Green Buildings in North America for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation based in Montreal.

            Emissions from residential buildings could be well below 1990 levels within the same time frame,…

              The global “techno-industrial society” will collapse because the human species is genetically and culturally programmed to act in ways that are unsustainable, says the expert who coined the term “environmental footprint.”

              The world’s population is too large to support the current lifestyles of individuals who live on the planet, William Rees, a professor of population ecology at the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning, said in a keynote talk to the Trudeau Foundation’s 2007 conference.

              “Degradation and depletion (are) really a measure of humanity’s evolutionary success,” he said. Humanity’s “biological predispositions are being…

              People worried about global warming should invest in new strategies and technologies in response to climate change rather than focus only on reducing carbon emissions, says political scientist and author Bjorn Lomborg.

              The “doomsday” climate change scenario predicted by Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and others has led to an erroneous, cost-inefficient approach focused mainly on cutting carbon dioxide emissions, said Lomborg, author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, and The Skeptical Environmentalist. The world needs a new conversation with a “sense of proportion” about the effects of climate change, not just “a one-way dialogue…

              Pressure and actions elsewhere to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will spur companies in Alberta and the federal government to cut emissions faster than planned, climate change experts say.

              Alberta intends to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in half by 2050, under a long-term climate change plan that includes carbon capture and storage technology, consumer incentives and ‘greener’ energy production, the provincial government announced in January.

              But action by other provinces, countries and stakeholders – including companies’ employees – will compel companies operating in Alberta to do more, experts told Insight Information’s 5^th Annual Canadian Oil Sands Summit in…

           It is impossible for Canada to reach the greenhouse gas-reduction targets the country committed to in the Kyoto treaty, says a federal government advisory group.

           At the same time, the Stephen Harper government’s climate change plan overestimates the amount of emissions reductions the plan will achieve, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) says in a report to government.

           The federal government’s Climate Change Plan and Statement “will result in carbon emission reductions during the 2008-12 period,” although it’s likely the plan “overestimates the extent of emission reductions . . .,” the NRTEE says in its report. “With respect…

              Reducing greenhouse gas emissions can potentially reap huge profits for companies and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, experts told the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) 2007 Oil Conference in Calgary.

              However, speakers in a session that addressed the “profligate use of energy” had different views on whether fossil fuels should or will continue to play a dominate role in light of the need to reduce emissions and stave off disastrous global warming and climate change.

              David Keith, an expert on carbon capture and storage and a Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment at the University of Calgary, told…

By Monte Stewart

              Canadian manufacturers say they could face billions of dollars worth of extra expenses if the federal government does not revise its greenhouse gas-reduction plan.

              Jayson Myers, chief economist for Ottawa-based Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME), says federal Environment Minister John Baird’s recently announced plan will likely force manufacturing companies to spend billions on regulatory compliance and emission reduction effort, but may still not be carried out. “This is nowhere near a plan,” Myers said. “These are just targets.”

              Baird’s plan emphasizes reductions in the intensity of emissions (rather than absolute emissions), calling for a 20-per-cent cut by 2015…

              Nearly two-thirds of senior technology leaders do not have a defined energy strategy to deal with global warming, even though more than 80 per cent of them closely monitor the issue, according to a new survey.

              More than 77 per cent of business decision-makers surveyed by Hill & Knowlton believe there is a need to expand the executive suite to include a chief energy officer to implement and manage a company’s return on investment in environmental technology – the so-called return on environment.

              The survey polled 420 senior business decision-makers from the U.S., U.K., China and Canada to determine how…

              The B.C. government has announced its “climate action” committee of cabinet ministers who’ll draft a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), but has invoked the Freedom of Information Act to keep the committee’s activities secret.

              The committee, headed up by Premier Gordon Campbell, includes: Forests Minister Rich Coleman; Community Services Minister Ida Chong; Labour Minister Olga Ilich; Energy Minister Richard Neufeld; Environment Minister Barry Penner; Finance Minister Carole Taylor; and Small Business Minister Rick Thorpe.

              Penner said in an interview that the province is “very serious about addressing this pressing problem that’s confronting the world.” The government’s throne…