Measures to cut carbon emissions must have teeth to succeed, says Brock University climatologist Anthony Shaw.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to have effective monitoring, reporting and verification protocols,\u201d says Shaw, professor in the Department of Geography. \u201cWe must know the amount of carbon that industries are putting out. We need to have industry-approved instrumentation to collect data and the data have to be verified and publicly available.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the government must take action against defaulters through imposing hefty fines and other penalties.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shaw calls Ontario\u2019s recent budget a \u201cgood first step\u201d in reducing the province\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions, a major contributor to climate change.<\/p>\n
“Ultimately, the program must go hand in hand with improved technology to reduce emissions along with other strategies to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and energy conservation\u00a0measures in commercial and residential buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2016 budget sets out Ontario\u2019s \u201ccap-and-trade\u201d plan under which various industries are allocated a certain number of carbon allowances. They can purchase or sell allowances according to their emissions targets, with the province placing a limit on the total amount of emissions overall.<\/p>\n
The plan also includes a consumer carbon tax in the form of increased gas and energy prices.<\/p>\n
Shaw cautions that the price of allowances needs to be just right. Too-high prices might result in industry \u201cleakage\u201d where businesses pack up and move to countries with lax policies.<\/p>\n
If prices are too low, \u201cthen there is no real incentive for industries to reduce their emission and sell these allowances if they\u2019re only going to earn a small amount of income from these sales,\u201d says Shaw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Measures to cut carbon emissions must have teeth to succeed, says Brock University climatologist Anthony Shaw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":36992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3319,1,4],"tags":[3852,3641,794],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37840"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37847,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37840\/revisions\/37847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}