AUTHOR
Matthew Paterson
Matthew Paterson is Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.
Since the court decision of August 30th that put the Trans Mountain pipeline on hold —and the cat decidedly among the pigeons — Canada’s energy/climate politics has been strangely quiet. Trans Mountain was the last of a batch of …
READ MOREIn the fallout from Doug Ford’s election as Premier of Ontario, two things have dominated public debate regarding climate policy. One, the provincial cap and trade plan along with the court case to stop the federal government from imposing a …
READ MORETrump’s executive order, “Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth,” is the latest and perhaps most wide-ranging assault on climate change policy under the Obama administration in the US. Much has already been said about it, with excellent commentaries …
READ MOREJustin Trudeau has announced that the Liberals “won’t set a specific emissions target” for greenhouse gas emissions to address climate change. His reasoning is that, “what we need is not ambitious political targets. What we need is an ambitious plan …
READ MOREThe UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long been regarded as the most authoritative guide to the status of knowledge about climate change. Read any report by a government, international organization, business group or NGO and they almost …
READ MOREThe world’s attention (or at least that bit of it thinking about climate change at all) is focused again on the annual UN negotiations that convene for two weeks every December. This year in Lima, increasing attention is being given …
READ MORETuesday’s U.S.-China climate deal has been hailed widely as an “historic deal” that dramatically changes the dynamics of international climate politics as countries search for a new global agreement by the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Climate …
READ MOREWhile international negotiations on climate change continue to stall, innovative action to address it goes on in a wide range of places and involving a dizzying array of actors. Most people have tended to place their hopes on a single …
READ MOREThe demise of carbon markets has been predicted a number of times. The latest episode to provoke this claim was the failure of the European Parliament to strengthen the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in a recent vote on …
READ MOREHow is global governance organized? For many complicated issues, governance is being pursued at multiple sites, by different actors, at different levels and, in many cases, across space in a messy transnational fashion. What, then, are fruitful ways of understanding …
READ MORE‘If only we could take the politics out’ has become a ubiquitous cry in contemporary political life. This can be seen everywhere, but Barack Obama’s decision on the Keystone XL pipeline is a classic instance. It has been decried from …
READ MORESo the Canadian government is apparently planning, according to numerous media reports, to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. The Environment Minister, Peter Kent, refuses to confirm or deny the reports.
The surprise should perhaps precisely be that this …
READ MORESo the International Energy Agency (IEA) produced its annual World Energy Outlook this year. The central message seems to be: PANIC! IT MAY BE TOO LATE.
When a sober organisation full of technocrats and policy wonks screams panic, you know …
READ MORELast month saw two events of interest on the climate change front.
One is the protest on September 26 in Ottawa by activists opposing the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to be built from Alberta to Louisiana in order to take …
READ MORE