Energy policy

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When Paul Martin met with George Bush and Vicente Fox in Texas last March to chart further continental integration (while Martin’s neo-liberal competitor for the Liberal Party crown, John Manley, was pushing for even further subordination of Canada’s economic and political sovereignty to American interests),  all of Canada’s political-economic élite seemed blissfully ignorant that globalization, as we know it, is about to implode. Canada is increasingly tying itself to a falling star—the American Empire.  The reason it’s falling? Peak oil and the related phenomenon of global warming.
(HALIFAX) Nova Scotia needs to revise its energy strategy, according to a report released today the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA-NS).  "Securing our energy future: A review of Nova Scotia’s energy sector, 2004" examines the recent changes in the production and regulation of energy in Nova Scotia.  The report, prepared by Larry Hughes, a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Dalhousie University, addresses developments in the natural gas industry, offshore worker health and safety, electricity regulation, home heating programs, climate change,
When the Ontario government passed electricity restructuring legislation at the end of last year, it was bowing to Washington’s trade liberalization pressures by moving to conform the province’s electricity program to that of neighbouring American states. The McGuinty government’s proposed new electricity system, which will be open to private ownership, could activate the free trade agreements Canada has entered into with the U.S. It could force us into bidding against American consumers to buy our own provincially-produced power.
Unless the U.S. and Canadian governments act soon, many of us could be sitting in the dark again as we were during the blackout of August 14, 2003 that shut down much of the U.S. Northeast and Ontario, Canada. Both governments are failing to protect us from electricity blackouts. They are sitting on a recommendation made by their own joint blackout task force to commission an independent study of the contribution of electricity deregulation to blackouts. Unfortunately, even though no such study has been undertaken, the U.S. government and several U. S.
It looks as though Paul Martin is leaning toward supporting B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell’s campaign to lift the federal ban on drilling for oil in the Pacific Coast sea bed. In his pre-election cabinet shuffle, Martin dumped David Anderson as Minister of the Environment. Anderson had wavered between fence-sitting and environmental protection. On the green side of his personality, he was—and remains—a strong defender of the federal moratorium on Pacific Coast offshore oil drilling.  
Inside this issue: Shifting to a Sustainable Energy Plan for BC Shifting the Cost of Post-Secondary Education BC's Social Housing Shell Game BC's Growing Gap in the 1990s  
As evidence mounts that the end of the Oil Age is near, the task of replacing dwindling fossil fuels with renewable energy sources remains largely unengaged--but it will soon take on a grim urgency, if not panic. Governments in North America, though warned four years ago by the International Energy Agency that oil supplies could start running out as early as 2016, have still done virtually nothing, preferring to keep their citizens in the dark. As George Monbiot noted recently in The Guardian, “This is a civilization in denial.”