Premiers meeting on GHG Emissions

Well, I can manage to type with two hands again, which allows me to comment on the recent Council of the Federation meetings in NB. The Premiers of the Provinces and Territories were meeting over the past few days, and the major topic of discussion was GHG Emissions. While almost every province was in favour of a Cap and Trade system, none of the Premiers was able to stand up to Alberta to sign a country wide agreement to Cap and Trade emissions. So the greatest environmental pillaging our county has ever seen will continue, unfettered still. Alberta has a yearly surplus of over $8Billion, population growth that can't be handled, and crumbling infrastructure, yet they can't see the benefit of investing in clean technology, or in their future. They have even recently decided to impose a cap on wind energy production, yet they won't put a cap on oil sands development. What the powers that be in Alberta, along with our Calgarian Prime Minister, fail to realize that forcing companies to reduce their emissions by putting a dollar value on those emissions will only encourage innovation and establish an industry of carbon sequestration and diversion that could apply its trade all over the world. The technology has already been established to pump CO2 into the ground, and it can even be used to force more of their precious oil out of the ground, and implementing would barely make a dent in the oil companies record breaking profits.

Closer to home, Premier MacDonald said that many of the Premiers were asking about his Environmental Goals and Sustainability Act that states that NS will reduce our GHG emissions by 10% below 1990 levels by 2020. He also stated that "the province needs to move forward more quickly on determining specific plans on reducing emissions ... but we should have an added urgency based on what other provinces are doing". Very true. Nova Scotia needs a government who can make the tough decisions in the short term so that the province will benefit long after they are out of office. We have heard enough talk, when the governments sits in the Fall, the people of Nova Scotia will be looking for action.