Wednesday, March 14, 2007
A Climate Change Plan for Ontario
Toronto, Canada — The McGuinty government conducted a public consultation process in the fall of 2006, and Greenpeace joined other environmental groups in outlining how the provincial government should deal with climate change.
A Climate Change Plan for Ontario is long overdue. The McGuinty government conducted a public consultation process in the fall of 2006, but these meetings lacked adequate notice and preparation time, and provided no draft proposal or background material.
Despite these limitations to the consultation process, Greenpeace joined other environmental organizations, calling on the government to:
• establish a plan to meet Ontario’s portion of Canada’s Kyoto commitment and achieve further deeper reductions post-2012;
• commit all Ontario government agencies to achieving these targets; and
• adopt substantial measures in the 2007 provincial budget increasing conservation and renewable energy.
In December 2006, Greenpeace made a number of specific suggestions that the province should pursue. This document, Ontario’s Climate Crisis: The Time to Act is Now, is not meant to be a climate plan for the province. Rather, it identifies a number of policies and programs that should be addressed in order to devise a effective plan.
We have had no meaningful response from the McGuinty government, which has moved backwards by delaying its phaseout of coal generation, and by its support of nuclear power (both rebuilding old nuclear plants, as well as building new ones).
# posted by Francis Chartrand @ 11:25 AM 
