The price of copper has long been a bellwether for economic conditions. The price is strongly correlated to economic activity, industrial production and economic growth in general. It is also highly correlated with the Canadian dollar and economy. The red metal’s...
Canada’s national policy to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 necessitates divesting from fossil fuels. There is just one problem: massive outstanding loans from banks to the oil and gas industries. The oil and gas sector makes up more than 10 per cent of the...
The 2020 TomTom Traffic Index reflects a huge drop in worldwide urban traffic congestion levels. Congestion levels (rated by the percentage of additional time required for auto travel during “rush hour”) dropped in 387 urban areas while increasing in only 13. Overall,...
In 1970 Milton Friedman, a Nobel Laureate, in his article to the New York Times (The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits) proposed that an enterprise’s primary and sole responsibility was to the shareholder through the maximization of profits....
Canada exports huge quantities of water to the United States and all over the world. As the world’s fifth largest exporter of agricultural products – which are composed mainly of water – huge amounts of Canadian water leave the country every day. Whole lakes are...
A recent Globe and Mail story about a firm developing garbage-to-biodiesel technology shows how continuing progress makes the global warming extremists’ most hysterically apocalyptic predictions, and their extreme absolutist ‘solutions’, not only grossly wrong but...
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Shawn Atleo, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, federal and First Nations officials will meet here to discuss aboriginal education, governance and economic development. The meeting may have some success because Harper and Atleo are so similar. They both remind me (and I mean this as a compliment) of guys in my high school chess club. They are intelligent, quiet-spoken and can think strategically. They don’t blather a lot about what their next moves are going to be.
Europe's anticarbon crusade failed to extend the Kyoto Protocol this month, but the boys in Brussels don't give up easily. Now Europe may kick off a trade war with its new scheme to tax airlines on carbon emissions. The rule, which goes into effect January 1, will...
David MacKinnon discusses the benefits of rapid economic growth in developing countries like China and India, as well as the challenges facing Canada in an increasingly competitive global economic environment.
Over the years, some of the Kyoto fairy dust had begun to wear off. Global greenhouse emissions did not in fact appear to be declining very much. Many of the EU cuts were accounting tricks; counting the closure of inefficient, money-losing industrial dinosaurs in East Germany that were doomed to close anyway towards Germany’s greenhouse targets was a fairly typical example.
Cuba is a country undergoing economic modernization. This past year, the country allowed citizens to sale and purchase private property. Just recently, the government announced that citizens may now own vehicles. Slowly, this country is reforming itself and allowing...
Reports of people living in tents and shacks at Attawapiskat evoke comparisons with the Third World, with people living in the shantytowns of South Africa and the barrios of Mexico. The comparison is apt, because we now know a lot about how people in the Third World have elevated themselves out of extreme poverty.
In advance of the conference, the Canadian government signalled that it will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol – something that was confirmed Monday.
Ben Eisen shows that simple national emissions targets in international climate change treaties disadvantage countries like Canada that are experiencing rapid population growth.
This policy study demonstrates that population and economic growth are important determinants of greenhouse gas emissions trajectories in affluent countries.