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Manitoba to introduce cap and trade legislation

By: Larry Kusch

15/12/2009 12:15 PM | Comments: 22

Manitoba will introduce legislation enabling the creation of a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,

Premier Greg Selinger said today in a statement from Copenhagen, where he is attending the international climate change conference.
Selinger said the system will be subject to public consultations next year.

"Market mechanisms like cap-and-trade will play a large role in the global effort to address climate change in a cost-effective way," the premier said.

Selinger made the announcement at the Climate Leaders Summit 2009 held in Copenhagen today as a side-event to the UN Conference on Climate Change.

"The Climate Change Summit provides an opportunity to share practical strategies related to clean-energy development, low-carbon technology and regional co-operation on climate change," Selinger said. "These are areas where Manitoba has taken an early leadership role, and they are vitally important for creating new green economic opportunities for the future."

As part of the Climate Change Summit, Selinger is hosting a round-table called Power to the people: our clean energy future. It involves close to 20 government and business participants, speaking on policies that promote renewable energy development and expand clean-energy technology solutions.

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22 Commentscomment icon

I'll make my position perfectly clear. I'm a free-market, old fashioned liberal, but recognize market failures because of externalities, failures of the common and assymetrical information. But with most of the scientists and economists who have analyzed this issue, I think we should be pushing hard for an across the board, world wide carbon tax that will replace other forms of taxes within the decade, except perhaps for equity issues. Cap and trade isn't the most efficient system.

But because I believe that most citizens are essentially too selfish to give up the easy life that the fossil fuel economy has given them, I'll continue to enjoy the deep ironies of people who seem to think large SUVs constitute power and freedom. One rarely sees better testimonies to dependency, both economically and spiritually.

The Maples Cynic:
Actually, I know a guy that has written a few papers on global warming, which unfortunately confirmed the consensus view using new data sets and more sophisticated statistical techniques. He worked for a private US technology firm, developing technology for mobile phones, data transmission, and has a dozen or so patents in his name. He's also worked for the US Navy on underwater sound--finding submarines--as well as for other parts of the US government, and on contract to firms who use seismic data to find oil. It would be nice to think that all climate scientists are self-interested hacks who've invented a fake problem to worry us, but it simply isn't true. He has grand kids, and I know that the data sometime troubles him enough that he has trouble sleeping. I suppose the people who are confident that global warming isn't happening are all scientific experts who have read the relevant papers in Science and Nature and picked up the difficulties and weakpoints in the statistical analysis? Or are they the sort of experts that think ideology is a substitute for analysis?

Here is a video to break down the cap and trade system for those who need a breakdown
http://www.storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/

A have-not province will have less in the future. Please, somebody stop the madness! How insanely vain and arrogant to think anything Manitoba does will amount to a hill of beans globally. Why is Selinger concerning himself with global issues anyway? Great, Manitoba gets to be Ground Zero for the Mega-socialists.

"Power to the people?" More hollow NDP jingoism. "New green economic opportunities?" Manitoba will never get out of the red. Has the NDP's support base been reduced to the activist minority? Worse, an activist minority that has found a moral absolute in fighting climate change, a minority that has found a struggle for existence that transcends nations and provinces. Forget national socialism, here's mega-socialism.

"Market mechanisms like cap-and-trade will play a large role in the global effort to address climate change in a cost-effective way," the premier said. What global effort? Cost-effective? Only if you consider the cost to be the total destruction of the planet, then any money spent forestalling the ecological apocalypse is cost-effective. Politically, if you believe the planet is in that much danger, then couldn't you justify any measure of the state that could be construed as saving the planet? Beware of socialists looking for absolutes to use as clubs and levers.

Never mind addressing climate change, Greg, address your hubris and return to Earth somewhere in the vicinity of your jurisidiction.

Cap and trade? Thats like a fat person who wants to loose weight paying a refugee in Ethiopia not to eat but keeps on eating. As long as they keep on paying they can keep on poluting. How will this reduce climate change. Anyway climate began to ghange when the earth began and will keep on changing as long as the earth exist. 20,000 years ago one third of the earth was covered in ice and the oceans were 400 feet lower than they are today.Thats when the current warming began and the glaciers began to melt. I don't think there were too many SUVs running around nor were there any coal-burning power plants around that caused global warming.There is evidence that some time in the past the oceans were 60 feet higher than they are today. Google Sea level and Climate for this information.

Asking an environ'mental' scientist if Global Warming exists is like asking a used car salesman if used cars exist.
They'll both say 'yes' because if they say 'no' they're out of a job!

Selenger go ahead and put a cap and trade law in place for Murdertoba......The electorate will gladly "cap" and 'Trade" you and your crypto-Marxist party and its support of the greatest lie of the century....Climategate Greg!


Cap and Trade is one big SCAM!!!

Watch as U.S. Rep. Scalise points out that Gore met with Ken Lay, of ENRON-fraud fame circa 1998, as well as top members of Goldman Sachs-- all of which Al Gore obscures and denies.

In point of fact, Al Gore's founding partner in the sustainability-investment firm Generation Investment Management, LLC is none other than David Blood, CEO of Goldman Sachs' asset-management division until 2003. Gore-Blood founding their Carbon-trading Corp. in 2004.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH0Ryek7rHk

This is by far the worst thing to come along from the NDP ... why not just make everyone work for free! CAP it fine but absolutely NO trade what-so-ever! This will be another hidden tax. WOW !!!

Finally something progressive coming from Manitoba!

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