Source: The Globe and Mail

Alberta’s refusal to take part in a western climate change scheme is facing a back-door assault from carbon market enthusiasts.

Today in Salt Lake City, the increasingly powerful alliance of the Western Climate Initiative is gathering to fine-tune a plan that aims to put a price on electricity imports – including energy from Alberta’s coal-fired power plants.

The Guardian

Shell and BP have been warned by investors that their involvement in unconventional energy production such as Canada’s oil sands could turn out to be the industry’s equivalent of the sub-prime lending that poisoned the banking sector and triggered the current financial crisis.

The Toronto Star

The most useful lessons to be learned in the fight against global warming can probably be gleaned from grade-school problem-solving exercises – for example, that letting air out of the tires of a truck that doesn’t quite fit under a bridge is easier than raising the bridge. In other words, difficult problems don’t always call for complicated solutions.

New documents indicate the Conservative government plans to exempt the oil sands from restrictions on two key pollutants. Environment Canada projects a 60-per-cent rise in emissions of volatile organic compounds and a 5-per-cent increase in nitrous oxides from the oil sands by 2015. Every other sector of heavy industry in Canada will be required to achieve cuts in levels of the same pollutants. Sound about right?