On Monday, Environment Minister Peter Kent announced that Canada “will not make a second commitment to Kyoto.” In addition, Canada will no longer take steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and may begin to formally withdraw from the agreement next month. In place of the Protocol, Canada’s goal is for “a new international agreement, eventually binding, which would include all the major developed and developing emitters.” [...]

While Ontario’s ambitious feed-in-tariff (FIT) policy is being put to the test by domestic and international opposition, including a challenge from Japan, Japan has just achieved a major breakthrough for its own FIT policy as it continues to recover from the tsunami and nuclear disaster this past March. Both examples will have implications for renewable [...]

You would be forgiven if you looked at a map of Canada’s May 2 election results and did not see much evidence of Canada’s multi-party system, modelled on the United Kingdom’s Westminster style of government. The results from the election – the country’s fourth federal election in seven years – are historic on a number [...]

Canada’s boreal forest is in the news again this week with a study released yesterday by the Pew Environment Group. But while the Pew study argues that the preservation of the forest remains a top global priority, the Canadian timber industry may see a spike in demand for wood from Japan when it begins the [...]

In an earlier post, attention was drawn to the importance of Canada’s Boreal forests to its climate change strategy. As of May 2010, Canada signed the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, this was a voluntary agreement between companies (21 member FPAC) and Environmental organizations that account for two thirds of Canada’s entire Boreal forest. The agreement [...]

In January 2010, California passed regulation over Green House gases by determining the pollution of fuels coming into California: LA times has coverage here: “The Air Resources Board voted 9 to 1 in favor of the complex new rule, which is expected to slash the state’s gasoline consumption by a quarter in the next decade” [...]

Canada has slightly adjusted its mid-term climate mitigation targets to match US pledges. Canada’s Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, recently announced that Canada has changed its mitigation goals in an effort to harmonize with the Obama administration. Canada’s new emissions reduction target for 2020 is a cut of 17% on 2005 levels. Heading into the Copenhagen [...]

With the dust barely settled from the Copenhagen talks, critics within Canada have been scathing of its approach to the talks. They note Canada’s failure to take any leadership, its humiliation at the hands of the Yes Men (although there, Canada is hardly alone) in recent times, as well as the recipient of a fossil [...]

 From a party not known for a forward stance against Climate Change legislation and with many members downright sceptical, perhaps we should be positive when Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) visited Saskatchewan last week and declared himself a believer, that Climate Change was a “reality”. The interview, worth reading in full, brings to light some of [...]

Following on from Derek Piper’s article on Canada’s proposed Cap and Trade system for this fall, environmentalists and policy makers will be left to wonder at whether Prime Minister Harper’s effort is part of a more serious effort to tackle green house gas emissions or simply keeping up with Jones’. Some of the most far-reaching [...]