Climate & Environmental Policy

 Since taking office in February 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has focused on turning this northern country on the edge of the Arctic––which possesses the third largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela––into an energy superpower. The strategy behind this––burn, baby, burn––is the proposed doubling of the extraction of oil from Canada’s bituminous tar sands, located primarily in the western province of Alberta, from the current 2.1 million to 5 million barrels of oil per day.

As the fifth largest oil producer in the world, Canada's domestic and foreign policy is shaped considerably by energy and resource issues. In the nine years under the Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada has focused primarily on its oil industry and on strengthening its position as an energy power – without regard for the environment and local populations. In that context, the Harper government presented economic growth as being dependent on an aggressive expansion of the energy sector. However, that line of reasoning is now losing its force.

An international delegation of energy experts, policy makers and media from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, and South Africa visited Washington DC, Pennsylvania and New York on September 7-12, to witness fracking’s effect on local economies in the US as the discussion on fracking heats up in their respective countries.

In this 5-part audio series, Sandy Hausman, an HBF Energy and Climate Media Fellow for 2015, reports on recent advancements in marine energy development in Europe and the U.S. These stories were originally published for Virginia Public Radio. 

In the first week of June, the Czech government adopted an action plan that is supposed to lead to the construction of four new reactors in the country—first in Dukovany and then in Temelín. The government’s decision, however, is not the product of a rational political debate; it is the result of the long-term erosion of responsible governing. Therefore, the Czech Republic can serve as a textbook case of how decisions about the future of energy should not be made.  

Sandy Hausman, a 2015 Media Fellow of Heinrich Boell North America, investigates the secrets behind Denmark's success with wind power in part one of her series.

The willingness to make the switch to sustainable economic activity exists in companies and society, but the framework is missing: the case for green "Ordoliberalism."