Associated Press has a story about the expectation among an increasing number of U.S. power-industry executives that European-style caps on carbon emissions are coming. We just don’t know when. That said, the “writing is on the wall” the article states, pointing to state and regional initiatives that are likely to force the federal government to follow suit. Likely next decade.

Ultimately, movement in this area is going to have to happen on a state/provincial and regional level to get the ball moving in North America. While I’m seeing a lot of this happen in the U.S., I wish I’d see more of it happening in Canada. This shouldn’t be left in the hands of our federal Conservative government, which as we saw last week has let the nation down with a “green plan” that has no details and no real action. Just a long-term target set for… get this: 2050! This government will be lucky if it gets through the next year. My Toronto Star colleague James Travers has an excellent column today on the “alternative universe” Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to create.

Now, if for some strange reason an election is held within the next year and power is regained by the Liberals (armed with a new leader that campaigned on the environment), then maybe, just maybe, we’ll see some hard decisions, hard dates and tough legislation set before the end of this decade.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 21st, 2006 at 10:12 pm and is filed under Main Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.