Canadian financial companies investing in coal overseas as feds push phase-out – by Mia Rabson (Globe and Mail – December 12, 2017)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

THE CANADIAN PRESS: Canada’s national pension fund manager is among a group of Canadian companies that are undermining the federal government’s international anti-coal alliance by investing in new coal power plants overseas, an environmental organization says.

Friends of the Earth Canada joined with Germany’s Urgewald to release a report today looking at the top 100 private investors putting money down to expand coal-fired electricity – sometimes in places where there isn’t any coal-generated power at the moment.

The report lists six Canadian financial companies among the top 100 investors in new coal plants in the world. Together, Sun Life, Power Corporation, Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, Royal Bank of Canada, Manulife Financial and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board have pledged $2.9-billion towards building new coal plants overseas.

Read more

The starving polar bear raises a question: Is fake news okay for a good cause? – by Margaret Wente (Globe and Mail – December 12, 2017)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The video is shocking. An emaciated polar bear staggers across the tundra. She is nothing more than a bag of bones. It’s clear that she is on her last legs.

“My entire team was pushing through their tears and emotions while documenting this dying polar bear,” wrote Paul Nicklen, a National Geographic photographer, on his Instagram post. “It’s a soul-crushing scene that still haunts me, but I know we need to share both the beautiful and the heartbreaking if we are going to break down the walls of apathy.”

Mr. Nicklen’s heartbreaking video, posted a few days ago has now gone viral. It has received more than 1.3 million views, and the story has generated widespread news coverage.

He and his team at the conservation group SeaLegacy have done interviews from around the world.

Read more

Macron Aims to Keep Paris Climate Deal Alive – by Mark Deen and Ewa Krukowska (Bloomberg News – December 11, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

French President Emmanuel Macron this week will seek to breathe new life into the fight against global warming and sway debate away from skeptics of the process led by U.S. President Donald Trump.

At a series of events in Paris starting Monday, Macron along with leaders from the U.K., Norway, Mexico and Netherlands will draw attention to a dozen major projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. They’ll also give a push for increasing climate-related aid to developing nations, in step with a United Nations goal of channeling at least $100 billion a year by 2020. Trump is not scheduled to attend.

The meetings are designed to preserve the the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change sealed two years ago. That deal brought together some 200 nations including the U.S. and China in calling for limits on fossil fuel emissions everywhere for the first time.

Read more

Canadian energy firms take issue with Trump administration’s nod to coal, nuclear power – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – December 9, 2017)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Canadian energy companies have entered a battle over the U.S. electricity market in which natural gas, hydroelectric and renewable-energy providers are opposing Trump administration efforts to favour coal-fired and nuclear generators with premium payments for “reliability.”

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has formally proposed that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) impose rules creating new rate structures under which coal-fired and nuclear electricity generators could recover additional costs from consumers based on their contribution to system reliability.

That’s because those generating stations provide base-load power and maintain a 90-day source of fuel on site, unlike those providing electricity from other sources.

Read more

U.S. repeal of carbon rule criticized in coal country – by Kara Van Pelt (Reuters U.S. – November 28, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

CHARLESTON, W. Va. (Reuters) – Health groups, environmentalists and a former coal miner criticized the Trump administration’s proposal to dismantle an Obama-era rule to slash carbon emissions from power plants at a public hearing held in the heart of coal country on Tuesday.

The hearing also heard from many coal supporters who said that the plan would cost utilities billion of dollars, which would likely result in mining job cuts.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hosted the two-day hearing in West Virginia on its proposal to axe the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the centerpiece of former President Barack Obama’s strategy on climate change. It was the only meeting scheduled on the rule, which President Donald Trump has said would devastate the coal industry.

Read more

Coal Back as Flashpoint in Climate-Change Fight – by Jess Shankleman (Bloomberg News – November 18, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Coal emerged as the surprise winner from two weeks of international climate talks in Germany, with leaders of the host country and neighboring Poland joining Donald Trump in support of the dirtiest fossil fuel.

While more than 20 nations, led by Britain and Canada, pledged to stop burning coal, German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her country’s use of the fuel and the need to preserve jobs in the industry. Meanwhile Poland’s continued and extensive use of coal raised concerns that the next meeting, to be held in the nation’s mining heartland of Katowice, could thwart progress.

“People don’t have total confidence that Poland wants to increase ambition, to put it plainly,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. “They’re 80 percent dependent on coal, they’ve been pushing back against European Union proposals to increase ambition.”

Read more

Canada’s pathetic, empty-headed crusade against coal – by Terence Corcoran (Financial Post – November 15, 2017)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Of all the empty gestures in the pathetic history of global climate policy-making, few match the air-headedness of Canada’s intent — to be officially announced Thursday at the United Nations COP23 climate conference in Bonn — to lead a global campaign to rid the world of carbon-emitting coal.

By any measure, Canada is a nobody in the coal business, ranking near the bottom of all global measures of the industry, worth less than one per cent of global production and consumption. Canada is a non-player, a zero, an insignificant speck on the great world coal market.

But that isn’t stopping Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, donning her Climate Crusader Halloween outfit, from swooshing into COP23 to take on the world. “Canada is committed to phasing out coal,” she said.

Read more

At same time U.S. hosts Bonn event praising coal, Canada’s environment minister goes on Twitter to blast its use – by Mia Rabson (National Post – November 14, 2017)

http://nationalpost.com/

CANADIAN PRESS – OTTAWA — A U.S. effort to stoke the fires of coal-powered electricity didn’t escape the attention of Canada’s environment minister Monday as Catherine McKenna used her Twitter account to troll the carbon-based fuel just as American officials were extolling its virtues.

McKenna is in Bonn, Germany, for the 2017 United Nations climate change talks, where the rules for implementing the 2015 Paris accord are being hammered out — and where she and British counterpart Claire Perry hope to convince the world to abandon coal-fired power.

By contrast, the United States — with President Donald Trump at its helm — has famously promised to “end the war on coal.”

Read more

Canada, Britain to tout coal phase-out as U.S. champions fossil fuels – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – November 13, 2017)

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and her British counterpart, Claire Perry, will launch an international alliance to phase out coal-fired electricity at the Bonn climate summit this week, signalling a sharp contrast to U.S. President Donald Trump’s promotion of coal as an important global energy source.

Ms. McKenna will take the stage at the annual United Nations climate summit to showcase Canada’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including a national carbon pricing plan and federal-provincial moves to shut down traditional coal-fired power by 2030.

As the minister touts Canada’s record at the UN summit, some critics at home argue the Trudeau government is not living up its lofty rhetoric on climate change.

Read more

Excerpt: Exposing the totalitarian roots of the climate industrial complex – by Rupert Darwall (Financial Post – November 7, 2017)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Were it not for its impact on industrialized societies’ reliance on hydrocarbon energy, theories of man-made climate change would principally be of limited academic interest. In fact, these theories were first politicized precisely because of the demands they make to decarbonize energy.

Sweden debuted global warming as part of its war on coal when Al Gore was still at law school. It was meant to have ushered in an age of nuclear power. The reason it didn’t, instead becoming an age of wind and solar, is principally because of Germany.

Despite being Europe’s premier industrial economy, German culture harbours an irrational, nihilistic reaction against industrialization, evident before and during the Nazi era. It disappeared after Hitler’s defeat and only bubbled up again in the terrorism and antinuclear protests of the 1970s and the formation of the Green Party in 1980.

Read more

The Green Opportunity: Having our cake and eating it too – by Bjorn Lomborg (National Post – November 3, 2017)

http://nationalpost.com/

One can admit that cutting CO₂ has a cost, but argue the climate benefits are still worth it. But we need to be honest there’s a trade-off

The concept of trade-offs has become unfashionable. Politicians around the world like to pretend that their choices will bring us nothing but superlative benefits.

Nowhere is this whitewashing more pervasive or accepted than in climate change. There is a prevalent, comforting notion that we can have our cake and eat it too: that cutting carbon need not involve financial sacrifice.

We hear this rhetoric so often that we almost don’t notice it. In announcing plans to make the UK a global hub for “green finance,” the British minister of state for climate change and industry Claire Perry said, “The transition to a low carbon economy is a multi-billion pound investment opportunity.” Norway’s Prime Minister recently claimed climate change offers “an opportunity for development and growth.”

Read more

How Trump saved freedom and democracy from the Climate Industrial Complex – by Peter Foster (Financial Post – November 3, 2017)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Donald Trump as saviour not just of American democracy but global freedom? One can imagine tall foreheads exploding everywhere at such a thought. Although he doesn’t express it quite that strongly, this is one inevitable conclusion from Rupert Darwall’s tremendous new book, Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex.

That’s because Trump, by abandoning the Paris climate agreement, and reversing his predecessor’s attempts to bypass Congress on environmental matters, has heaved a mighty wrench into the European-based thrust to impose global bureaucratic “governance” under the pretext of saving the world from climate catastrophe.

Beyond all the blather about Trump’s presidency representing the triumph of redneck ignorance and deplorable racism — and whatever Trump’s personal shortcomings — Darwall notes that one of the main reasons for his victory was that the American left had abandoned working people in pursuit of identity politics and radical environmentalism.

Read more

Trump finally ends the undemocratic autocracy of Obama’s climate crusade – by Lawrence Solomon (Financial Post – October 13, 2017)

http://business.financialpost.com/

The Trump administration this week announced it would repeal the Clean Power Plan, former president Barack Obama’s signature global warming program.

The end of the Clean Power Plan — designed to reduce power plant emissions by one-third and establish the Obama administration’s climate bona fides prior to the opening of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 — represents more than another nail in the coffin of the climate change mission. More profoundly, it is another sign that the global warming tyranny that has been compromising the rule of law is coming to a close.

The Clean Power Plan and other global warming reforms could have been legitimate, and Obama wanted them to be. But the global warming bill that he pushed in his first term — the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 — couldn’t muster the necessary votes in Congress.

Read more

Australia’s new energy policy asks renewables to outcompete coal – by Clyde Russell (Daily Mail/Reuters – October 18, 2017)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Oct 18 (Reuters) – It would be easy to dismiss the Australian government’s discarding of a renewable energy target as a Donald Trump-like attempt to cling on to polluting fossil fuels in the face of the rise of cleaner alternatives.

Certainly, the decision by the centre-right Liberal Party federal government to end subsidies for renewable energy projects and reject advice to set a clean energy target has the appearance of being an abandonment of efforts to mitigate climate change.

There will be no shortage of accusations that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull seems eager to walk in the footsteps of U.S. President Trump, who has made it a priority of his administration to support coal-fired power, while expressing doubt about the veracity of man-made climate change.

Read more

As Beijing Joins Climate Fight, Chinese Companies Build Coal Plants – by Hiroko Tabuchi (New York Times – July 1, 2017)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62
countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global
Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-
fired power capacity by 43 percent.

When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.

But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.

These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.

Read more