Climate Conversation Group

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) seems to believe that we’re causing global warming and we must be stopped.

The alternative is that they’re really trying to save us money. But it’s impossible to accept that they really want the best for us. As the old joke puts it: “I’m from the government; I’m here to help you.” Ha ha.

EECA spends about $130,000,000 a year (p48). In the year ended June 2012 the actual expenditure was $123,016,000 against a budget of $155,761,000 from revenue of $127,926,000 (budget was $154,600,000). I don’t yet know where all the money goes. Through the “Energy Spot” they tell us we spend too much on electricity, although they don’t mention that could be due to constant price hikes from the “national” power stations our fathers and grandfathers proudly paid for, rather than actual increases in the cost of generating electricity. [The original comment here said that our power stations now have private owners, but that's wrong. The shareholder is our government. My apologies. - RT] They also nag us nightly to use less petrol and they hand out government subsidies for biodiesel and an experimental wave power device. Read more… »

– by Mike Jowsey, regular participant in the Climate Conversation Group

Habeas Corpus – late Middle English: Latin, literally ‘you shall have the body (in court)’ (oxforddictionaries.com)

Environment reporter Raveena Aulakh.

A heart-string-tugging humanitarian piece was published in the Toronto Star last weekend. It concerns the plight of some 250 million climate change refugees expected worldwide by 2050 and was entitled Climate change forcing thousands in Bangladesh into slums of Dhaka.

Rising sea levels could flood 17 per cent of Bangladesh and create between 20 million and 30 million refugees, experts say. The Star’s environment reporter Raveena Aulakh recently travelled to the country to look at how climate change is affecting one of the world’s most densely populated countries and its people. Read more… »