Tag Archives: environment

More Partsanization Of The Environment  The Environmental Protection Agency was founded during the presidency of Republican Richard Nixon, if perhaps with some lack of enthusiasm. The first national cap and trade (or “tradable emissions permits”) system, for SO2, was instituted during the presidency of Republican George H.W. Bush. In 2008, Republican John McCain had an alternative plan to that proposed by Democrat Barack Obama for dealing with...

After eight extensive posts about the Ontario electricity sector, I am expanding my geographic coverage to look at the electricity sectors in selected OECD countries. My focus will be on the historical and relative performance of each country’s sector with respect to decarbonization and prices. As in the case of Ontario, whole volumes could and have been written about each of these countries, and the electricity sector in general, including with respect to current and future reliability...

That’s the Canberra Times headline for my latest article. It’s paywalled, and hasn’t yet gone up on Inside story, so the text is over the fold. The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are predictably grim, but in a sense, irrelevant. The scientific debate over climate change has been over for some time, and the reality of climate change is now evident for anyone who chooses to look. Until about five years ago, debates on climate policy lined up...

This is a picture of the beaver pond behind my old family home in western Massachusetts: You can’t tell from the picture, but the pond is at least a mile long and 1/4 mile wide, I think considerably bigger.  The land under the pond had been farmed and then forested before being flooded by beavers.  We know the land was farmed because there are stone walls that run into it, and we know it was reforested because when we first bought the land in the...

There have been a number of important developments in the Ontario electricity sector since my last update when I summarized my arguments in front of the Ontario Legislature against the proposed Provincial Conservative legislation, now enacted, that eliminated the Provincial Liberal rate-based borrowing scheme to subsidize electricity prices and replace it with Government revenues. The tax-payer financed subsidy of $2.8 billion in 2018/19 has now ballooned to $6.5 billion in 2021/22 and...

That’s the self-explanatory headline for my latest piece in Independent Australia Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

. Instead, it’s a flight of fancy. That’s the tile of my latest piece in The Conversation. Read there, comment here. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Adani (now ludicrously renamed Bravus) is pushing ahead with the Carmichael mine-rail-port project, but the financial and reputational costs keep mounting. Having been forced to finance the mine and rail project out of its own funds, Adani is now finding that its Adani Ports business (of which the Abbot Point coal terminal is only a small part) is becoming equally toxic. PIMCO, once its biggest bondholder announced that it would no longer invest in new bond issues. At the same time,...

That’s the title of my latest piece in Inside Story (republished with a slightly different title in The Canberra Times). It draws on a shorter summary I published here. Read it at Inside Story, and comment here. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Former Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, with whom I worked on the Climate Change Authority a few years back, has a new Quarterly Essay, on Getting to Zero (emissions). Some quick observations It’s far too generous to the current government. However, it makes sense for Finkel to be diplomatic and diplomacy abhors franknessA comprehensive and readable wrapup of the main issues in managing an orderly transition with the current systemMost notable, Finkel is very cool on nuclear energy...