PDF version:   Climate Change Legislation – Waiting for Obama; or Just Waiting

Shaun Fluker’s environmental law non-event of the past decade  focused on case law (or lack thereof). My review of climate change legislation continues Shaun’s theme. We waited for federal legislation. Then we waited for the Obama climate change legislation. Now with the President’s Senate majority gone, how long can Canada continue to wait?

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Document considered: Meeting of the parties to the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, Tromsø, Norway, 17 - 19 March 2009 Outcome of Meeting

PDF Version: The Tromsø meeting of the parties to the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears: a comment on three aspects of the meeting report

A few weeks ago (March 17 - 19, 2009) the parties to the 1973 Polar Bear Agreement met in Tromsø to consider the further implementation of the Agreement. This is a significant breakthrough. Apart from a meeting of the parties back in 1981 when the Parties decided to continue the Agreement in force as contemplated by Article X(6) of the Agreement and in informal meeting of the range states in 2007, the parties have never considered the further implementation of this Agreement.

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Considered: Accelerating Carbon Capture and Storage in Alberta, dated September 30, 2008, released October 22, 2008

PDF Version: Comments on the Interim Report of the Alberta Carbon Capture and Storage Development Council, Accelerating Carbon Capture and Storage in Alberta

In these comments we focus on three aspects of the interim report: (1) the treatment of the ownership of pore space, (2) the design of a provincial tenure system for geological sequestration, and (3) the treatment of liability issues. In each case we provide our understanding of what it is that the Council proposes and then we provide our comments. While we welcome the report and agree with the need to accelerate the adoption of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in Alberta, we think that these sections of the report require further clarification before the Council issues its final report. In particular, we think that the report needs to do a much better job of, identifying the problems and providing reasoned arguments for the solutions that it advances.

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