CPoC Should Make Its Campaign Carbon Neutral

Blogging Tory Erwin Gerrits asks: How does buying [carbon] ‘offsets’ save the environment?

He then cycles through the standard list of denialist talking points: CO2 isn't a pollutant, Kyoto a Socialist plot, carbon offsets don't work, Gaia worshipper Maurice Strong wants to give our money to the Chinese.

And he concludes that, because Global Warming is all baloney, the Conservative Party shouldn't really worry about buying carbon offsets in an effort make their own campaign carbon neutral.

Naturally, asking the wrong question leads you to the wrong conclusion. The question he should be asking is: Will the Conservatives live up to the principles of their own environmental plan?

Because the Tories have insisted that Global Warming is not all baloney. And because buying carbon offsets is central to the Tory's own Turning The Corner initiative. In fact, what they have proposed--their environmental plan--is a standard issue national "cap and trade" system, albeit one with loose time-lines and inadequate (because intensity based) emissions caps. It even allows Canadian companies to participate in the CDM, the international carbon trading system developed under the Kyoto accord. Conceptually, it is not a lot different from the NDP's proposals, and not a whole lot different from Stephane's Dion's Green Shift. For example, even under the Tory cap and trade system, money will flow East from Alberta.

But that aside: the Tories believe in it. Therefore they have given the stamp of approval to a means of reducing the carbon footprint of their campaign to zero but are not using it. Why not? Are they suddenly running out of money? If so, why not take all the money they've saved from shutting down their $1,000,000 website and its pooping puffins and redirect some of that cash saving the planet from their own hot air?

Cheap Carbon Capture?

Researchers have developed porous materials that can soak up 80 times their volume of carbon dioxide, offering the tantalizing possibility that the greenhouse gas could be cheaply scrubbed from power-plant smokestacks. After the carbon dioxide has been absorbed by the new materials, it could be released through pressure changes, compressed, and, finally, pumped underground for long-term storage.

The "pumping it underground" part is obviously still an issue, because "What are you going to do with millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide that is not nearly as compact as nuclear waste?". And what happens if the pipe-line carrying your CO2 breaks, spills into a low-lying area, and suffocates anything living there?

Nevertheless, an interesting first step.

Kate Blames Suzuki For Her Lousy Search Skills

...or that is what I assume to be the lesson of this post, which links to an interesting article in Solid Waste Magazine re. a project in Saskatchewan where they are pumping liquefied carbon back into a barren oil field for storage, and then links to the results you get when you run "CO2 Sequestration" through the search engine at David Suzuki's website, which are Zero.

Apparently, we are supposed to be appalled at Suzuki's lack of interest in the topic. But of course if you run a less technical phrase like "carbon sequestration" through the same engine, you get plenty of hits.

Although you don't get material on this particular type of project at Suzuki's site, and in fact I suspect that Suzuki would look upon schemes which hide the results of emissions as expensive gimmicks that merely serve to delay action on actually cutting emissions. Indeed, there exist severe mid to long-term problems associated with carbon burial.

However, I would point out this recent statement from the National Academies, which represents scientists from 13 countries, including Canada, on tackling AGW:

... it will be necessary to develop and deploy new sources and systems for energy supply, including clean use of coal, carbon capture and storage,unconventional fossil fuel resources, advanced nuclear
systems, advanced renewable energy systems (including solar, wind, biomass and geothermal energy), smart grids and energy storage technologies.

In other words, the NAs are suggesting we will have to throw pretty much everything, including clean coal, carbon storage, and nuclear power, at the wall to get a handle on the issue, and hope that something sticks.