My story in today’s Toronto Star reflects on British economist Sir Nicholas Stern’s visit to Toronto yesterday. The fact that his presence managed to draw hundreds of business and political types — literally packing the room — is yet another sign that we’ve reach a tipping point in the climate-change debate. As the CEO of Shell Canada pointed out, a couple of years ago it would be difficult to attract so many business people to hear an economist talk about the environment. But Stern has become somewhat of a celebrity since he released his Stern Review last October and warned the world that acting decisively on climate change at minimal cost today will prevent certain economic collapse down the road as extreme weather, rising sea levels and droughts play havoc on the world economy.

UDPATE: Here’s my take on the new ban and response from Canadian officials.

When a California lawmaker moved to ban the incandescent bulb, I loudly applauded but didn’t think the bill had a hope in hell. So it was with great surprise that I read stories this morning — click here and here — about Australia’s determination to actually do it. “The Australian federal environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said Tuesday that he would work with the states to get rid of incandescent bulbs by 2009 or 2010,” according to the International Herald Tribune. The ban is expected to be fully implemented by 2015.

Obviously, there’s a growing movement here that shows the days of the old-fashioned light bulb are numbered. Let’s hope Canada soon sees the light.

I’ve got a feature today in the Toronto Star looking at new Energy Star standards for personal computers (notebooks, desktops, game consoles) that will go into effect on July 20. This is long overdue, given the proliferation of electronic devices in the home. Following computers, TVs will be the next target. Hopefully this will help to counter the increased energy consumption that comes with buying big-screen plasma and LCD TVs.

Another story, which was run earlier this week, looks at the possibility of turning wastewater sludge into hydrogen at municipal wastewater treatment facilities. Two researchers, in a paper to be published soon in Bioresource Technology journal, say that seeding sludge with biosolid pellets could be a good way of maximizing hydrogen production because the pellets contain microbes that produce hydrogen. This is important, because sludge alone contains both hydrogen-consuming and hydrogen-producing bugs, self-limiting hydrogen creation. By using biosolid pellets, the researchers figured out a way of giving the good microbes the upper hand in the production-consumption battle.

If you follow the plug-in hybrid trend, then you know that Hymotion Canada is one of the few companies out there that specializes in converting hybrid-electric cars such as the Toyota Prius into plug-in hybrids. My podcast this week is an interview with Ricardo Bazzarella, founder and president of Hymotion, who talks about “plug-in momentum” and important developments in battery technology. He also talks about the significance of GM’s Volt announcement and speaks generally about the benefits of a plug-in approach.

My Clean Break column today takes a look at Canadian-designed Candu reactors and their ability to run on spent fuel from competing light-water reactors from Westinghouse, Areva and GE. Using the so-called DUPIC process (you can read the article to find out what the acronym means), the Candu can become a way for countries with light-water reactors (specifically, pressurized water reactors) to reuse/reduce their waste and somewhat cut their dependency on enriched uranium. I’m not a big fan of nuclear, but this is one of those lesser of evils stories: We’ve got light-water waste, we need to deal with it, so why not reuse it to slow down the accumulation of this waste? There are other benefits, and a bunch of risks — read the story to find out what they are.