2009, You Should Have Taken the Blue Pill

Year end is always a good time, I figure, to step back and look at the bigger picture and see how things are going. To begin with, I want to review something I've covered before, but is worth repeating at least once more: the exponential function. No don't skip ahead, this is not complicated, and it's important.

If something grows exponentially, all that really means is that the bigger it is, the faster it grows. You can understand how this is a process that could accelerate over time, and eventually get quite out of hand. Get bigger, grow faster, which makes you bigger, which makes you grow faster, which makes you bigger, and so on.

The thing about exponential growth patterns is that they can have a long period of what looks like stability, but that the growth cycle gets out of hand and there is a sudden unsustainable burst followed by, in most cases, a crash.

This initial long period of relative stability can create the illusion of sustainability. The example that made this clearest to me is the example of a water lily which doubles in size every day. Eventually, the lily will occupy the whole pond and smother it, killing all other life in the pond. But how much of the pond will the lily occupy just one day before the whole pond is covered? Only half. And the day before, only a quarter. The end will come suddenly, after a long period where it seemed everything would be all right.

Exponential growth can not be sustained and the only way out is to lower the rate of growth somehow.

Consider the following chart of global population over the last few hundred years.



Image from here

You can see the pattern of exponential growth, the line getting ever steeper and steeper as growth feeds size which feeds growth and so on. And keep in mind that on top of this growth in population, our economy is premised on exponential growth in wealth per person. So we have an exponential growth piled on top of an exponential growth.

Clearly, a continuation of this level of growth was not possible, and thankfully, reductions in global birth rates (especially in China) have ended this exponential growth pattern in enough of the world so that global population is levelling out and may even decline at some point in the next century.


However, global population has so far been able to rise to about 7 billion and counting, without being brought down by famine, pestilence or some other limiting factor. In order to understand if we can maintain this record, we need to understand what has allowed us to continue feeding (almost) everybody and advancing civilization, in the face of such huge numbers of people on a finite planet.

Some would say it is simply the expansion and application of human ingenuity, an infinite resource, and that we therefore have nothing to worry about, and could handle a global population of 20 billion or 50 billion or 100 billion.

Although I agree that human ingenuity is important, I offer two caveats (with a third implicit caveat being that there probably should be more caveats, I just haven't thought of them).

1) As much as ingenuity is important, if that ingenuity can’t come up with a replacement energy source for oil we have big problems. With enough energy you can solve almost any problem. Short on fresh water? Pipe it over mountain ranges, extract it from the oceans, build massive dams and reservoirs and irrigation systems. Short on food? Use natural gas to manufacture fertilizer, scour the earth for potash, irrigate the deserts. You get the picture. But without a big surplus of cheap energy, none of these methods for expanding nature's bounty are all that feasible.

Even all the efforts to reduce our dependence on oil (metal wind turbines shipped halfway around the world, massive concrete dams with 1000's of miles of transmission towers, etc.) depend on significant amount of cheap energy to build and maintain.

Will we inevitably find a better replacement for oil as supplies run low? Can we maintain a global population this large and the current Canadian lifestyle with dwindling supplies of easily accessed oil and gas? These are questions we don't have an answer for yet.

2) At a certain point, ingenuity is overwhelmed. Even the most optimistic cornucopian would admit that an earth which has one person per square foot of land wouldn't be a pleasant or sustainable place to live. The question is, is the current 8 billion and counting already past that point? Lately the global problems suggested we've overshot our carrying capacity seem to be piling up faster than we can solve them and few think that the world could sustain everybody living the way people in Canada currently do.

We’ve seen the problems from acid rain, we've had (and have ) the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere. The steady collapse of fisheries around the globe as we move further and further down the food chain. Dead zones in the sea due to agricultural runoff. Climate change(pdf) due to greenhouse gas emission. Deforestation. Loss of biodiversity. Acidification of the oceans. Etc.

Of course we will take action to try and mitigate these problems but each one will be a battle that will absorb resources, and many of them can only be partially mitigated, some hardly at all, and as long as we try to maintain global population and consumption at ever increasing levels, or even maintaining the current levels, these problems are just going to come harder and faster. At what point are we spending most of our resources just mitigating the negative effects of our existence, and few trying to improve it. At what point does even devoting all of our resources just trying to preserve the status quo prove inadequate? Are we past that point already? Again questions we don’t know the answer to.


So, 2009. The environmental problems will continue to harry us, but it’s still early days on that front (I hope!). After helping to blow up the global economy in 2008, oil prices and commodity prices are a big question mark for 2009. Absent some of that old human ingenuity, we currently seem stuck alternating between growth that drives up commodity prices because we don’t know how to get them cheaply any more or high commodity prices that kill growth because the inputs to everything get too expensive. I suspect that they will generally stay low for most of the year as the economic news gets grimmer and grimmer.

And on the financial front, while I predicted that financial problems would be the primary unpleasantness in 2008, even a pessimist like me underestimated just how bad things would be for the financial world last year. It will be more of the same in 2009, I suspect, namely trillions of dollars in government money given to banks to try and preserve the unpreservable status quo of a high leverage high debt economy.

There is no shortage of question marks surrounding the fate of the financial world in 2009, with seemingly plenty of smart people on both sides of every one. One of the questions I see asked most often is whether we will have deflation or inflation (likely deflation in 2009, followed by inflation at some point in the future). Another is will the U.S. dollar serve as a refuge as part of a flight to safety, or will people lose faith in the future value of U.S. dollars leading to a sudden, rapid plunge in the value of the U.S. dollar (beats me, either seems very possible - but sooner or later the bubble in U.S. debt will pop).

As for Canada, in 2008, the commodity boom that marked the end of the last debt fuelled boom, combined with the delayed collapse of our housing markets relative to the rest of the world helped cushion Canada from the economic troubles affecting the rest of the world. Now its 2009 and our housing market is falling and commodity prices are fallen and the last bits of Canadian smugness that suggest that, even if its not different this time, its different here will be wiped away by year's end.

Still in a world of 8 plus billion people, where resources of all kinds are likely to be in short supply, a place like Canada with a (relatively) sound financial system, a (relatively) stable political system, a placid population and a high ratio of useful stuff to people should be able to do better than most places over the medium haul. Sadly, doing better than most places in 2009 is likely to be a very low bar.

A friend who's been through a few recessions in his day suggested in a recent email that this might be a good time to 'keep your job, save some money for a pinch and ride out the impending hard times.'

Sounds like good advice to me.

Here For a Good Time, Not a Long Time

I've been reading all the way back through this blog, Some Assembly Required. It's basically one post every day with a series of links with brief commentary. The themes and point of view are pretty similar to my own - we need to put the financial system on more stable footing, and not through government bailouts of wealthy corporations and shareholders - we need to start taking peak oil seriously - we need to start taking global warming seriously. But reading all the posts, and a number of the links, going back through the site day after day after day, it gave me a feeling of being almost overwhelmed by how fast (in historical terms) our society is heading towards a wall.

With a world population above 6.5 billion and climbing, almost every last one aspiring to a life with more material wealth, the analogy it brings to my mind is of the most popular bloggers, who find that as their site grows in readership, they have to be careful who they link to, lest they overwhelm somebody's server by directing a heavy flow of traffic there. As a site grows in readership (as humanity grows in population and power) it gets easier and easier to overwhelm the other parts of the ecosystem. Want to build electric cars or solar cells for 1 million people and there are plenty of resources - try to do it for 6.5 billion and everywhere you turn you wind up running into constraints. Try to feed 1 million people with fish and there's no problem. Try to feed billions and you find yourself eating your way down the food chain, depleting one formerly rich feeding ground after another. Can 7,8,9+ billion people live on this planet in affluence? I guess we, or the next generation will find out.

But on the plus side, life is looking up on a more personal level, so I can extend a little optimism that we'll be able to deal with enough of our problems well enough to avoid bringing the whole thing down, at least not until after I've passed on.

Sitting and Waiting For Events To 'Run Their Course'

This comes via James Wolcott, via Energy Bulletin, via Roger Pielke Jr. so you may have seen it already, but just in case you haven't, I thought it was worth mentioning.

Global warming is a complex, controversial issue and it can be hard to find good sources which provide a detached overview of both the politics and science involved and a clear, calm assessment of where we're at and where we're headed. Which is why a paper like this one, by Tim Dyson, professor of Population Studies at the London School of Economics, which can provide this kind of overview in 15 largely non-technical, jargon-free pages is worth linking to.

Since, no matter what I say, I know only a few people are likely to actually follow the link, I'll quote from the abstract,

"Essentially, five main points are made. First, that since about 1800 economic development has been based on the burning of fossil fuels, and this will continue to apply for the foreseeable future. Of course, there will be increases in the efficiency with which they are used, but there is no real alternative to the continued - indeed increasing - use of these fuels for purposes of economic development. Second, due to momentum in economic, demographic, and climate processes, it is inevitable that there will be a major rise in the level of atmospheric CO2 during the twenty-first century. Demographic and CO2 emissions data are presented to substantiate this. Third, available data on global temperatures, which are also presented, suggest strongly that the coming warming of the Earth will be appreciably faster than anything that human populations have experienced in historical times. The paper shows that a rise in world surface temperature of anywhere between 1.6 and 6.6 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 is quite conceivable - and this is a conclusion that does not require much complex science to appreciate. Furthermore, particularly in a system that is being forced, the chances of an abrupt change in climate happening must be rated as fair. Fourth, while it is impossible to attach precise probabilities to different scenarios, the range of plausible unpleasant climate outcomes seems at least as great as the range of more manageable ones. The agricultural, political, economic, demographic, social and other consequences of future climate change are likely to be considerable -indeed, they could be almost inconceivable. In a world of perhaps nine billion people, adverse changes could well occur on several fronts simultaneously and to cumulative adverse effect. There is a pressing need to improve ways of thinking about what could happen - because current prognostications by environmental and social scientists are often rather restricted and predictable. Finally, the paper argues that human experience of other difficult 'long wave' threats (e.g. HIV/AIDS) reveals a broadly analogous sequence of reactions. In short: (i) scientific understanding advances rapidly, but (ii) avoidance, denial, and reproach characterize the overall societal response, therefore, (iii) there is relatively little behavioral change, until (iv) evidence of damage becomes plain. Apropos carbon
emissions and climate change, however, it is argued here that not only is major behavioral change unlikely in the foreseeable future, but it probably wouldn't make much difference even were it to occur. In all likelihood, events are now set to run their course."

As the paper notes, the Canadian record on greenhouse gases is especially grim:

"It was noted above that in the last decade or so virtually all countries have continued to burn greater amounts of fossil fuel. This also applies to those that have arguably been most prominent in supporting the Kyoto process - notably Canada, Japan and those of the EU. Many of these countries are unlikely to meet their CO2 reduction targets agreed under the Kyoto treaty (which finally came into force in 2005). Thus comparing 1990 and 2002, it is estimated that Canada's emissions increased by 22 percent and Japan's by 13. While the CO2 emissions of the EU(15) remained roughly constant, this was mainly due to reductions in Germany and Britain - both of which gained fortuitously from a move away from coal towards natural gas (which emits less CO2 per unit of energy)."

At least the Ontario Liberals plan to close the provinces coal plants (largely replacing them with natural gas in the medium term) should help bring our emissions down. Aside from that I think our best bet is to combine a carbon tax with substantial long term per/kwh incentives for renewable power and significant investments in new hydro capacity, both small and large scale. But I've been over that ground before. Anyway, there's lots more good stuff in Dyson's paper beyond what I've quoted, so I recommend giving it a look.

The Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing

Last week, over at Voice in the Wilderness, guest blogger Princess Monkey had a perceptive post up titled, "Sucks to be Her", in which she reacted to Margaret Wente's column which denigrated the efforts of Bob Geldof and his "digging a hole to nowhere".

Said Princess Monkey,

"Margaret goes on about "Saint Bob" and how his efforts to help the African people amounted to nothing. The only thing that amounts to nothing is her column - and perhaps her sense of basic human kindness. Thankfully, her kind of cynicism can't compete with whatever it is that drives people like Geldof and Bono to do what they do. She looks at them and sees "arrogance" - others look at them and see hope. Sucks to be her."

Whereas my immediate reaction was just to the nonsense of the words (in Wente's column) themselves, Princess Monkey looked a little deeper to wonder just how cynical someone had to be to write something like that.

Anyway, Wente was back earlier this week writing about the noble efforts of Bill Gates to use his considerable fortune to effect positive change, in Africa and around the world.

Now most people would just leave it at that, feeling that it was enough to write a positive column praising someone's good work, and maybe suggesting we try to learn from what works in their approach. But with Wente, praising Gates seems to be just a device which allows her to criticize others. She opens with, "Who's saving more African lives these days than anyone else? No, it's not Mahatma Bob. It's not the Western governments that keep funnelling billions into the Swiss bank accounts of arms dealers and African dictators, or even those well-meaning NGOs with their well-digging projects."

One paragraph in and she's already mocked the efforts of Bob Geldof, everyone who's ever been involved in development work funded by the government and everyone who's ever been involved in development work not funded by the government (condescendingly referred to as 'well-meaning').

Then she actually talks a bit about Gates before relapsing with,

"His appearance at last weekend's Live 8 concert in London left some critics frothing. "The super rich got their wealth by heading a system of exploitation and imperialism which shatters the poor and wrecks lives -- not least in Africa," frothed one. "Will feigning concern for those less fortunate provide some nice PR for your predatory software juggernaut?" frothed another."

Aside from the use of 'frothed' three times in one paragraph when zero uses would have sufficed, what is the point of quoting these unnamed frothers? Surely we could find a couple of unnamed people to froth about just about any topic, especially one as famous as Bill Gates.

You wouldn't think this topic has much to do with global warming, but Wente finds a way to work it in,

"The other meaningful thing Mr. Martin could do is take all the money we're wasting on our futile effort to stop global warming and turn it over to the Gates Foundation. Global warming may or may not threaten our way of life a hundred years from now; no one really knows."

There's more, including a rant against governments which are against genetically modified plants but I grow weary. I could spend all day talking about the good which has come from Bob Geldof's efforts, about the good work which has been done by people funded by the federal government's aid programs, about how global warming is already affecting people's way of life right now, how efforts to prevent global warming are critical, how in a 100 years global warming, if left unchecked, could be destroying our way of life (not to mention any number of species), how Gates foundation might not be so effective if it became politicized and about the risks of genetic engineering, and the reasons why many people feel genetically modified food is a technology which should be used sparingly, if at all, and on and on, but, having read Princess Monkey's post, I now simply wonder about Wente's motivation in writing such mean-spirited columns as she has been doing lately.

Perhaps she is simply emulating Rex Murphy, affecting the attitude of the contrarian who doesn't 'fall' for the conventional wisdom. The thing is, when I think of contrarians I think of a Socrates or a Voltaire, the brave soul who takes on the establishment and (as usually happens when you take on the establishment effectively) ends up being punished for their actions.

What's really sad about Wente is that, while she portrays herself as the outsider bravely taking on the powerful, in actual fact she somehow, unerringly, always seems to side with the powerful against the weak. Far be it from Wente to take on the oil companies and their propaganda 'science' or the biotech giants like Monsanto who seek to patent both food and life itself. Instead look for her to take on unnamed protestors who froth at the mouth, pop stars who try to improve the world, and of course, the easiest target of all, our federal government.

This is perhaps an overly personal observation, but I think Wente might benefit from spending some time in the arctic, seeing first hand how human and animal lives are already changing to keep up with the climate. Then maybe spend a couple of days following around Bono or Bob Geldof as they work tirelessly to use what influence they have to make what positive changes they can, even if they don't have billions of dollars of their own to spend on it. Best of all, maybe go to Africa and spend some time digging wells with those 'well-meaning' NGO's. And maybe when she got back she would have left her phony contrariness and her deep, unpleasant cynicism down at the bottom of one of those wells where it belongs.


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At the risk of insulting my readers' intelligence, I should note that the title of the post comes from Oscar Wilde's famous assertion that, "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

I suppose Wente might reply (as the character in Wilde's work does), "And a sentimentalist is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market price of any single thing.", but I don't think Wilde was implying (nor do I myself think) that those are our only two options.

Heavy Snow

No that's not a description of the weather here in Vancouver where the cherry trees are in full blossom and I haven't needed a jacket (never mind a toque) for weeks now. What I'm referring to is the feeling I get sometimes trying to write a blog while watching hundreds of interesting stories and any number of bad arguments in need of correction, as well an uncountable list of topics that could benefit from further investigation pass by every single day while I'm lucky if I can find the time/energy/insight/wit/etc. to comment on more than a couple a week. It puts me in the mind of someone trying to catch all the flakes in a heavy snowfall by running around with their tongue sticking out.

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Jonathan over at No More Shall I Roam, has managed to catch a couple of good sized flakes recently, one being this post which provides the best summary/context surrounding the recent Mercer Consulting Report which ranked Canadian cities highly for their 'livability' that I've yet seen, whether in the papers or in blogs, and the other being this post from a week back (yeah, I'm slow) which provides a great look at some of the science behind global warming concerns and also explains why the earth is warmer than the moon (in case you were wondering).

Sticks and Carrots May Break My Bones…

...but words will never motivate me.

With the date when the Kyoto Accord comes into force approaching (Feb 16), the next couple of weeks should see the Federal government once more try to come up with a sensible plan for how to implement it.

So far their approach has consisted primarily of spending money to repeatedly ask people to stop emitting so many greenhouse gases. To nobody's surprise this campaign of words has accomplished nothing and the time is coming to bring in the sticks and carrots.

(Note: a stick is when the government makes the emitter pay and a carrot is when they make the taxpayers pay)

An article in the Globe today suggests that the government is mainly looking at carrots (subsidies for 'green' vehicles, lower taxes on co-generation plants, rebates on energy efficient appliances, extending the Wind Power Production Initiative to include not just wind but other renewables and so on).

But after talking about the various carrots for the whole article, the last line is:

The government is considering forcing auto makers to make a 25-per-cent improvement in fuel efficiency by 2010, and compelling business emitters to meet greenhouse reduction targets

so there may be some sticks in the plan as well.

If the Liberals are looking for ideas, the NDP has lots. As far as I can tell, their plan has 44 points, and seems at times to be simply a list of anything any government somewhere has ever done to try to reduce fossil fuel use.

Still, like a man with a machine gun in a shooting gallery, they do manage to make a few direct hits (such as implementing an emission trading system for large emitters and mandating appliances to meet energy-star standards), and the Liberals could do worse than to cherry-pick the ideas they like from the NDP plan (they'll probably need NDP support to get the budget passed anyway).

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In trying to decide what makes a good plan vs. what makes a bad one, I was forced to think about why we need the government to intervene in the first place.

I see three reasons: The primary one is that our pricing system is not working properly. Our emitting of greenhouse gases carries a cost, but that cost is not captured in the price we (or industry) pays to emit. That is, when you buy gas, the price doesn't include the potential cost of the planet's climate changing.

The second one is that it seems like industry often needs a push from government before it will develop new, more efficient ways of doing things. It seems odd, and certainly I'm not saying that business doesn't innovate, because it does constantly, but when government comes in and sets a standard, it focusses attention on that issue, and also reassures companies that they won't be losing a competitive advantage by pursuing something their competition is not spending any money on.

The third reason is that people tend to be irrational when they buy things in that they put more weight on the up-front cost then they do on the life-cycle cost. i.e. They buy the cheap appliance without thinking about how much they're going to spend on electricity or they buy the gas-guzzler and don't worry about the cost of gas.

Keeping these problems in mind, I generally prefer solutions which try to fix the inaccurate pricing signals or which set standards that force industry to innovate and at the same time prevent people from making the worst of their irrational purchasing decisions.

What I don't like is when the government comes up with a whole pile of one-off incentives and rebates for specific items which they have decided would be the best things to focus on to reduce emissions.

As an example, the government may decide that the best way to get me to cut back my emissions may be to give me an incentive to buy a hybrid vehicle. Or they may decide that the best way is to make bus tickets tax free so I can take the bus to work. Or they may decide the best route is to subsidize me renovating my house to make it more efficient or to subsidize me buying a more efficient washing machine. But really, why not just raise the price of emitting across the board and let me decide for myself where I want to cut back. It seems like I know what would be a smaller sacrifice for me better than the government does.

So to make a long story short, my recommendations for implementing Kyoto would be as follows:

1) Raise the federal gas tax by 10c/L, and simultaneously cut the GST to 6%. The intention is to make this a purely revenue neutral change. Not a tax increase or a tax cut, just a redirection of taxes from general goods to gas.

2) Implement an emissions trading system (with a suitable time-lag to allow industry time to prepare for it). The trading system would allow for a certain total amount of industrial emitting (with the total allowed declining over time) and auction off the rights to emit. That way whoever the emissions are worth most to (i.e. whoever is producing the most value) gets them.

3) Honour and build on the existing commitments to expand the Wind Power Production Initiative to provide a 1c/kWh for any new green energy sources up to a cap of 10000 MW. The current plan, provides a roughly 1c/kWh subsidy to the cost of wind power for the first 10 years of operation for any new wind plants, up to a limit of 1000 MW.

4) All new appliances should be mandated to meet energy-star requirements within 3 years. Because people are irrational and will take the lower upfront cost even though it means higher energy costs down the road, I think the government needs to enforce a higher standard in this area.

5) Match California vehicle standards for fuel efficiency and emissions. In order to allow auto manufacturers to be reasonably efficient, it's helpful for them not to have to deal with too many different sets of rules. By matching our standards to some of the toughest ones in the U.S. we can help create a common market for carmakers to target.

6) Reduce investments in road projects and divert infrastructure money to transit projects and an expanded hydroelectric grid. Almost everyone agrees that government has a role to play in building infrastructure. What's not so clear is how much of a role the federal government should have. But given that they already spend a lot on infrastructure projects around the country, it makes sense for them to refocus from building more roads to building more transit and supporting development of renewable energy sources.

For example, a hydroelectric link between Manitoba and Ontario could potentially allow Southern Ontario to close down some of its coal plants which are among the biggest emitters in the country.

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I guess the biggest problem with this plan is that it could be political suicide, but hey I'm an optimist (plus, I'm not going to be up for re-election). As this random example I came across on the web indicates, raising gas taxes (even in a revenue neutral way) may not be all that popular. Reading stuff like that just leaves me amazed that the country is in as good shape as it is.

So far, the various details which have been leaking out seem to suggest a reasonable plan, but I hope the Liberals don't chicken out and go with all carrots and no stick, and I hope they don't just put together a laundry list of small targeted subsidies and rebates and tax breaks and programs and incentives rather than sending clear across the board pricing signals and demanding that industry meet a higher standard where that is appropriate. I guess we'll see.

Today's collective action problem

Imagine a scenario with the following characteristics:

1) The entire world has a problem.
2) Every nation is contributing to the problem, some much more than others
3) It is agreed that action needs to be taken in order to solve the problem.
4) It is believed that this action would be costly for every nation that takes part
5) The benefits from any action to solve the problem will be distributed equally to every nation, regardless of whether they themselves contributed or not.
6) Due to 4) and 5) any nation which takes action will be at an economic disadvantage vs. any nation which doesn't take any action.

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How would you go about solving this problem?

a) This problem has no solution. Just ignore the problem and hope it goes away.
b) Ask for volunteers and hope that some countries value the gain from helping solve the problem higher than the loss of economic competitiveness.
c) Try to get countries which are wealthier to take the lead in solving the problem, either by going first or by agreeing to take bigger measures
d) Try to get countries which are contributing more to the problem to take the lead in solving the problem
e) Try to get all countries in the world to agree to make contributions to solving the problem
f) Create a global level of government which has the power to force action on everybody in cases like this.

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Think about your options in cases like this (remembering the pressures that will face any government which undertakes some costly action while its neighbours freeload) the next time you hear someone saying that the Kyoto protocol is flawed, or so-and-so hasn't signed it, so we should just ignore the problem of global warming.

It's also worth keeping in mind when people say there is no need for a global level of government.

Real Science is Hard

If you're interested in the Canadian Blogosphere take on 'Global Warming' there's been lots of talk lately, starting at Stageleft,
continuing at Heart of the Matter, continuing at Bound by Gravity and also spilling over at Calgary Grit and Obsidian Tempest.

The upshot is that there are some right-wing folks who disagree that with the vast majority of climate change experts who believe that human activity is contributing to a general rise of earth's surface temperature (i.e. global warming) or who think that even if we are contributing to rising temperatures we should just roll with the punches (so to speak) instead of trying to prevent/minimize our impact.

What I find interesting is the contrast between the complexity of the scientific work on one hand and the simplicity of those who are arguing against the general consensus which arises from the scientific work. What it comes down to is that real science is hard, pseudo-science is easy.

Anyway, for those who are interested, here's a link to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN body set up to co-ordinate/synthesize the work done/knowledge gained on this topic by scientists from around the globe.

And here's a link to a very clearly written Blog, RealClimate which is run by some climate scientists and is devoted to providing timely, accurate responses/clarifications to mainstream media discussions of climate change. It's worth a look (for future reference, I've added it to my links under miscellaneous) - thanks to Jonathan for pointing it out.

To me, the question we should be talking about is how should we go about reducing our impact on the climate. I don't think that Rick Mercer commercials are the answer, but I admit that I don't know what is. I'm thinking that the division of powers between Federal and Provincial is probably a complicating factor, but don't know that for sure. Suggestions are welcome.

Good news day

Some good news for a change in Canada today:

First off, as someone who consumes more than his share of pre-packaged, high-fat food, it's good to see the Canadian government moving to follow the lead of Denmark (and New York fries) and ban trans-fats (for the most part anyway).

There's a great, (albeit somewhat smug) quote from Dr. Steed Stender, the head of the Danish Nutrition Council on the CTV's website on the topic (note: this quote is from before today's decision, back when Canada was still planning mandatory labelling for trans-fats, but no other regulation).

As for the Canadian and U.S. governments' approach, Stender has strong words.

"As they say in North America: 'You can put poison in food, if you label it properly.' Here in Denmark, we remove the poison and people don't have to know anything about trans fatty acids," he says."

Let's just hope they follow through on this and it doesn't die in a cut-off minority session or get watered down by industry lobby groups in the Senate like the bill on animal cruelty.


Second on the good news front, the Ontario government seems to be following B.C.'s lead in appointing a 'citizen's assembly' to study electoral reform.

Let it be known I hereby predict that the assembly will propose a Mixed-Member Proportional system (in contrast to the one in B.C. which recommended STV (Single transferrable vote). Let it also be known that either STV or MMP would be a vast improvement over the current First-Past-the-Post system which was never designed to accommodate anything other than a 2 party system.


Finally, the last piece of good news "Canada will be champion of Kyoto, Dion vows":

Just words so far, but better words than we've heard on the topic in a long time from the Liberals. And coming from someone who just may have the smarts and guts to make it happen. I wish him all the luck in the world.


So that wraps up today's good news. OK, it's true, our civilization is still unlikely to make it to the end of the current century intact but that doesn't mean we shouldn't avoid unnecessary heart attacks, try to prevent the destabilization of the global environment and replace outdated electoral systems in the meantime.

Update (July 17, 2009): So the Federal government still has taken no action on trans-fat, but the B.C. government will limit them starting in September, 2009.

The Ontario citizen's assembly did recommend MMP as I predicted but it was defeated in the referendum. Stéphane Dion wasn't just all talk with his environmental rhetoric, but sadly was unable to form a government as Liberal leader to implement any of it - since 2004 Canada's record on the Kyoto/Climate Change file has been one of, if not the worst in the world.

So much for good news.