Monday May 12, 2008
ENVIRONMENT 
Jumbo squid swims north, imperilling B.C. hake
When British Columbia's hake fleet sets off to trawl the deep ocean off the West Coast later this month, crews will be on alert for a strange, voracious squid that is invading the north Pacific.
Alberta community in turmoil over plan for nuclear power plant
Dan and Huguette Ropchan stand on the grainy edge of ice-crusted Lac Cardinal in northwest Alberta and worry that in a decade they'll have to raise their wheat and canola in the shadow of monster nuclear cooling towers.
It's time to kill corn subsidies and go Brazilian
New in the ROB, feature columnist Eric Reguly will write in this space every Monday.Your doctor will tell you not all cholesterol is created equal. The dangerous version can kill you, the good can make you healthier. Brazil uses the same line with ethanol. The corn-based stuff pumped out by the Americans and Canadians is bad, bad, bad. But our sugarcane ethanol is cheap and plentiful and environmentally friendly.
Polar research is coming in from the cold
High above the Arctic Circle, in one of Canada's coldest corners, is a snow-encrusted bright blue warehouse that's increasingly become a hot spot for the world's scientists.
Opposition gives Campbell the gears for ignoring carbon tax in speech
NDP Leader Carole James says she's surprised Premier Gordon Campbell delivered a speech to a key gathering of northern communities in Prince George on Friday without a single reference to the carbon-tax issue that galvanized the annual meeting.
Dion told carbon tax tough sell, insiders say
Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has been warned by his own party pollster that his proposal to impose a carbon tax could be a tough sell in an election, insiders say.
Light and fruity - with half the alcohol
Global warming may be the latest threat to the wine industry, but a clutch of producers in one of Spain's hardest-hit regions say they've found a way to survive and even profit from it.
Canada awaits U.S. wildlife service ruling on status of polar bear
After months of delay, a court order will force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare on Thursday whether it believes polar bears are endangered - a recommendation keenly awaited by Canadian environmentalists and energy companies.
Carbon conundrums
The momentum building in some Canadian constituencies in support of a carbon tax as an alternative to a cap-and-trade system overlooks two critical points.First, a cap-and-trade system provides more certainty since it ''caps'' emissions levels. A carbon tax, by only regulating the price of emissions, provides no such certainty.
Carbon conundrums
Both the Liberal ''revenue-neutral'' carbon-tax proposals and the response from John Williamson of the Taxpayers Federation (A Tax Hike Is A Tax Hike - Letters, May 10) are short-sighted. They seem to assume that ''taxes are taxes'' and that an increase in one can be offset by a decrease in another.
Carbon conundrums
Jeffrey Simpson (It's Time We All Paid Attention To Gordon Campbell - May 10) much overstates the B.C. greenness initiatives. Premier Campbell is not Kermit-the-Frog green.He has welcomed a third container port berth on tidal flats outside our front door. That will result in some 550 more diesel trucks a day - one truck every 75 seconds during daylight - plying our roads. The road upgrade to absorb this blitzkrieg will be built through Burns Bog, a peat-based nature sanctuary known as ''the lungs of Greater Vancouver'' for all the oxygen it generates.
Carbon conundrums
Residents of northern B.C. seem to think they are going to bear a larger burden of the new carbon tax. The whole point of the tax is to penalize those who burn more fossil fuels, so it is hard to imagine a campaign of that nature winning any concessions.
Carbon conundrums
A carbon tax (''We are not changing the carbon tax. No.' - Globe B.C., May 10) is yet another attack on rural B.C. We do not have public transportation alternatives, we have farther to travel to reach schools, shopping and entertainment, and we get hit with higher shipping costs on all goods.
Carbon conundrums
The northern B.C. communities want an exemption from the carbon tax, but they chose to live there for many reasons. One is the fact that housing is much cheaper than in the bigger cities. Should people in Vancouver ask for exemptions from provincial taxes because they pay so much more to live in their houses?
