Edited by William K. Carroll Athabasca University Press Available for purchase and free online reading, use discount code REGIME20 until August 15, 2021 for a 20% discount. The following excerpt was adapted from introduction to Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy: Regime of Obstruction features research findings from the first three years …

EDMONTON and OTTAWA –– A new report by the Parkland Institute and Oxfam Canada exposes how $1 billion in federal COVID-19 emergency funding transferred to the Alberta government is failing to achieve its intended social and environmental objectives. When funding to clean up orphaned and abandoned oil wells in Western Canada was announced in April …

The book Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy is available in PDF format free of charge or to purchase a physical copy use discount code CMP20 to receive 20% off before the end of June 2021.   From the publisher Rapidly rising carbon emissions from the intense development of Western Canada’s fossil …

VANCOUVER – Increasingly, government and industry talk about “net zero” when it comes to emissions reduction targets. But what does this really mean?  Reducing emissions to zero is a clear concept, but “net zero” muddies the waters in that some greenhouse gas or carbon emissions are permitted as long as they are balanced by “negative …

Since the first oil well was drilled in 1859 humans have been on a roll. Global population has increased more than six-fold and energy use per capita has grown more than nine-fold. Accompanying this explosive growth in energy use was unprecedented economic expansion— since 1965 global GDP has grown 6.8-fold and per capita GDP has …

Despite Canada’s climate change commitments, the country’s “big five” banks continue to finance and support the expansion of fossil fuel industries. In fact, the extent of the banks’ support since the oil price collapse in 2014 shows that this backing hinders Canada’s progress on reducing emissions. These banks are perhaps the most powerful corporate entities …

Last summer I got out of Vancouver and toured northern BC. While the trip was mostly for pleasure, my inner economist could not resist some industrial tourism and visits to resource towns and major industrial sites that are the heart and soul of BC’s resource economy. Forestry dominates near Prince George, fishing at Prince Rupert, …

In December 2020, the BC government released its first Climate Change Accountability Report, the result of 2019 legislation aimed at improving the reporting and oversight of climate action in BC. The report lacks accountability in one important respect: it is not an independent assessment and reads like previous BC government reports on climate action that …

Canada launched Bill C-12 last month, a transparency and accountability act designed to achieve “net-zero” emissions by 2050. The government has also pledged to increase the planned 30 per cent emissions reductions by 2030 it committed to under the 2015 Paris Agreement even though as of 2018, the latest year for which data are available, …

Resource development has long been central to BC’s economy. But commodity prices swing, industries consolidate and patterns of demand change over time. When they do, resource industry workers are often left holding the bag. The price is often much more than just involuntary unemployment for laid-off workers, but also includes mental illness, increases in domestic …

Five years after the negotiation of the Paris agreement, the federal government is finally starting to walk the talk on climate change. Canada’s updated climate action plan, released December 11, is the most serious piece of climate policy we’ve yet seen from this government. It comes alongside new measures announced by 70 other governments as …

Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government implemented a multi-pronged strategy to demolish the vestiges of university autonomy and self-governance and to assert direct political control over post-secondary education institutions (PSEIs). This takeover stems from the UCP leaders’ ideological antipathy toward all public goods and their desire to recommodify education, health care and parks, while stripping …