clean air?

Great - the Conservatives have come up with a clean air act that will reduce emissions to "45%-65%" of 2003 levels by 2050. Never mind that the earth is melting, that cancer is more and more prevalent - as is asthma, COPD (Coronary Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), plants are choking and going chlorotic, etc., etc.

It is telling that Rona Ambrose is the daughter of an oil executive. We now have the same problem with our government as the Americans do with theirs (vis-a-vis the environment), in that the fox is in charge of the hen house. The Conservatives have also said that the economy is more important than the air we breathe. The proposed regulations will not be enforced if they "hurt the economy".

Rona Ambrose is a piece of work. She is scary. Where the hell did they pull her from? The Sydney Tar Ponds link? She is just making crap up. Example:

OTTAWA -- Environment Minister Rona Ambrose is under fire for statements to a committee that appear to have been inaccurate.

Sun Media has learned that costing figures cited by Ambrose during testimony to the environment and sustainable-development committee don't match estimates offered by the purported source.

Ambrose told the committee last week that electricity costs would rise 65% in Ontario and 40% in British Columbia if Canada tried to meet its Kyoto protocol commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 6%.

When asked where the numbers came from, officials in Ambrose's office said they were extrapolated from a study by M.K. Jaccard and Associates in Vancouver.


The company's general manager Chris Bataille said Ambrose's projections for the electricity figures don't match the company's analysis.

"Looking at our latest calculations, they should be more like 26% for B.C. and 32% for Ontario," Bataille wrote in an e-mail. Minister's Kyoto figures questioned -Toronto Sun

She (Ambrose) trotted out some pie-in-the-sky ideas such as Transit Pass Tax Credit - which, it was claimed, would take 56,000 cars off the road every day. That is assuming that people will get out of their cars, and use the woefully inadequate (in Vancouver, anyhow) public transit systems. The tax credit will only really benefit those who already use public transit.

“Just based on the ridership that we have today in Canada, the transit pass tax credit alone is the equivalent of taking 56,000 cars off the road, every day,” Ambrose said. “That’s a lot of greenhouse gases.”

Michael Roschlau, president and chief executive of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, said he was mystified as to where Ambrose was getting her numbers.

“I’m not familiar with those figures,” Roschlau said. “They certainly didn’t come from us. We have no way of measuring that at this point.”link

The Conservatives have put forward the idea of a 15% tax credit on a monthly transit pass costing $80 ($12/month). For the projected 56,000 drivers leaving their cars for public transit, that adds up to $672,000/month, or $8,064,000 per year. If every household in Canada changed just one 60w incandescent light bulb for a 20w compact fluorescent bulb, it would save the equivalent of 64,000 cars off the road.

I think that it would be more effective to subsidize the lightbulbs.