Articles by John McGrath

New Canadian budget supports dirty energy industries, disses renewables

More than a year ago, I wrote about Stephane Dion's election as Liberal leader, and was guardedly optimistic about what it meant for Canadian environmentalists. Let's just say that the last year has been pretty disappointing.

The latest came yesterday, after the Conservative government announced a budget that shovelled hundreds of millions of dollars toward fossil fuels and nuclear power. Dion has said his party will support the budget and not trigger an election.

How bad is this budget?

Well, probably the best indication is normally mild-mannered Tyler Hamilton's reaction:

New subsidies for the coal, oil and nuclear industries and new handouts to major automakers. No mention of climate change. No extension of incentives for renewables. The cancelling of incentives for buying energy efficient vehicles. Dismissal, once again, of a carbon tax.

I think I'm going to throw up. We're screwed.

The poverty of fossil fuels becomes apparent

Martin Wolf makes what I think is a really bad argument in the Financial Times:

We live in a positive-sum world economy and have done so for about two centuries. This, I believe, is why democracy has become a political norm, empires have largely vanished, legal slavery and serfdom have disappeared and measures of well-being have risen almost everywhere. What then do I mean by a positive-sum economy? It is one in which everybody can become better off. It is one in which real incomes per head are able to rise indefinitely ...

This is why climate change and energy security are such geopolitically significant issues. For if there are limits to emissions, there may also be limits to growth. But if there are indeed limits to growth, the political underpinnings of our world fall apart. Intense distributional conflicts must then re-emerge -- indeed, they are already emerging -- within and among countries.

What about the RPS in Texas?

So Senate Republicans managed to kill the Renewable Portfolio Standard in the energy bill.

One question: who was the big-government, nanny-state liberal who forced one of the nation's largest and most successful RPSs on the poor, unwitting state of Texas?

Hint: As Governor of Texas in 1999, he signed the RPS into law and later moved to the District of Columbia to pursue other opportunities, like threatening to veto a bill that would have treated all Americans like Texans.

How does Jane Fonda keep defeating the U.S.?

Full disclosure: I was born in 1981, and as far as I can recall I never masturbated to a picture of Jane Fonda.

Too much information, I know. But what else can I do? An eternity ago (September) the guys who brought you Freakonomics brought you this little gem, blaming Jane Fonda for America's CO2 emissions. Seriously: