Tag: Climate Change

Despite wildfires Poilievre’s party campaigns against climate measures

It wasn’t just  people from the Northwest Territories and the Okanagan Valley who have recently had their lives disrupted. The latest outbreak of wildfires that has added to the record destruction of our forests and forced some 50,000 people to flee their homes also inconvenienced Pierre Poilievre and his Conservative party (aka the PPC – Pierre Poilievre Conservatives).  Last week, the PPCs  had to postpone their campaign against carbon pricing.   The PPCs had planned an “axe the tax rally,” featuring Poilievre, for last Monday in Campbell River, B.C., a community about 500 kilometres west of the latest major...

Read More

What to make of a Climate Plan with no plan for 36% of GhG emissions?

Critiquing the Houston government’s climate action plan during this summer of climate chaos is like fiddling while Rome burns. But the other PC Tim, Environment and Climate Change Minister Tim Halman put an entire string section to work producing last week’s portentously-titled “Urgent Times, Urgent Action: The Annual Progress Report on the Environmental Goals and Climate Change Reduction Act and Nova Scotia’s Climate Plan,” henceforth to be known as UTUA. The opus received a fair bit of media attention, so a review is in order. Like much of the literature on climate change and related matters provincial governments have...

Read More

The climate has changed, politics should follow

Hackneyed commentary about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic seemed inevitable last week with the simultaneous shuffling of Justin Trudeau’s cabinet and release of a poll showing the Liberals trailing the Pierre Poilievre-led Conservatives by double digits. The shuffle itself was ho-hum, except perhaps for those closest to the action – the trio of ministers given the boot and the newbies getting their first shot at a cabinet post. The poll, on the other hand, was a bit of a shocker.  The unprecedented 10-point lead for the Conservatives comes with the usual caveats. The Abacus Data poll claims a...

Read More

Trudeau government’s Climate Accountability Act passes to the sound of one hand clapping

Accompanied by much damning with faint praise, the Trudeau government’s climate change legislation passed third reading in the House of Commons last week. A few minutes after midnight on June 23 – just ahead of the first record-breaking heat wave of the summer – the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act was approved by a vote of 204 to 114. Then it was off to the Senate where the committee assigned to conduct a pre-study had already concluded that the incoming Bill C-12 is “weak and will not lead to actual reductions of GHGs.” Flaccid as the act is, the...

Read More

New book says Canada needs to fight climate change like we fought the Nazis

Timing may not be everything but it is important. Seth Klein was putting the finishing touches on his climate crisis call to arms A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency when COVID-19 hit. The war metaphors for the fight against the virus followed almost immediately and continued at many pandemic constrained Remembrance Day ceremonies last week. For now at least the pandemic and the resulting economic disruption have resulted in governments spending what it takes to wage war against the virus threat. Parallels have been drawn with World War II when the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio exceeded 100...

Read More

Richard Starr, The man behind the Point

About Richard

RICHARD STARR has had careers as a journalist, public servant, broadcaster, political staffer and freelance policy adviser. He is author of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, a former radio and TV producer and weekly newspaper editor, and the author of three non-fiction books. Starr has lived in Dartmouth for more than 30 years.

Subscribe to Starr’s Point

Loading

Support Provided by