In yesterday’s post I had equated withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol with not agreeing to targets under a second commitment period. I’ve since gotten clarification on a couple of aspects of this.
Month: November 2011
Why the Harper government’s decision on Kyoto is both correct and not surprising
With the start of the Durban climate change negotiations, it was suddenly news that Canada would not confirm or deny it’s intentions to abandon the Kyoto Protocol – this may have been news to some, but I can’t understand why it would be news to anyone who has been following GHG policy in this country.
Keystone XL decision – more questions than answers.
When I left the house this morning to attend the launch of the Alberta Government’s new Oilsands Information Portal, I was expecting that there might be a question or two on the Keystone XL saga. It turns out that we just missed the big news story of the day. Just as the event wrapped up, news started breaking that the US State Department was going to request a new route be examined for Keystone XL in Nebraska. At a minimum, this would delay the pipeline’s Presidential permit until at least the first quarter or 2013, although previous statements from TransCanada suggested that the timelines could be on the order of 3 years. I spent most of the afternoon answering the same questions from reporters both in Canada and the US, so I thought I’d try to elaborate on some answers here and draw some lessons from the decision.