Canada is using Alberta’s dirty tar sands as an excuse to bully the European Union (EU) into watering down its climate change policies, leaving the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) in serious doubt.

This brewing transatlantic dispute over the tar sands stems from the likelihood that the EU could officially block the sale of Alberta oil in Europe given its high carbon content. 

The European Commission is reportedly “readying its defenses for a legal fight with Canada.”

A new report from Britain’s House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee warns the government that proposed energy reforms may have the perverse effect of encouraging companies to focus on building cheap gas power plants, limiting investments in renewable energy. As well, the Committee agreed with testimony from Friends of the Earth arguing that a “dash for gas” [80],  could prevent the country from reaching its climate action targets, especially since gas plants are expected to rely on unproven carbon capture and storage technology.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has said that £200 billion of new investment in energy infrastructure is needed by 2020 to meet rising demand and achieve renewable energy and climate change targets. First published in November 2009, and revised in October 2010, six draft National Policy Statements on energy (NPSs) laid out the importance of building and funding new electricity infrastructure, to include renewables, nuclear, fossil fuels and improved grid connections. The NPSs aim to increase confidence for investors and to speed up the planning process for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.

Practical experience with carbon markets in the European Union raises a critical question: Will such systems ever work?  Backers of these markets, which involve setting limits on greenhouse gases and then allowing companies to buy and sell emission permits, see the approach as one of the cheapest and most effective ways to control the gases in advanced economies. Yet in Europe, which created the world’s largest carbon trading market three years ago, early evidence suggests the whole approach could fail.  

Having failed last year to discredit the International Panel on Climate Change, the Fraser Institute is hoping to have better luck brainwashing today’s youth. The ExxonMobil-funded organization has developed a global-warming booklet for distribution to high school students and teachers across Canada.

Allegedly aimed at “helping them understand the issue and make their own decisions about what actions are needed,” the manuscript was compiled by rookie scientists and retirees with strong ties to oil and gas pressure groups.

 

Efforts to live a sustainable lifestyle are ending in a cloud of smoke as more people choose cremation over conventional burial. And not just because of greenhouse emissions. Lead and mercury toxins are also part of the devil’s brew expelled in the flames.

BALI, Indonesia - European nations will boycott U.S.-led climate talks next month unless Washington accepts a range of numbers for negotiating deep reductions of global-warming emissions, Germany's environment minister said Thursday.