Ottawa Citizen: Why green business is crucial

(August 12, 2010) Stewart Elgie was a Bay Street lawyer when he began litigating over the Exxon Valdez spill. It changed his life.

University of Ottawa professor Stewart Elgie is founder and chair of Sustainable Prosperity, a national policy-research initiative focused on market-based approaches to environmental protection and economic sustainability.

In 2001 at the age of 40, he became the youngest man to receive the Law Society of Upper Canada's medal for exceptional lifetime contribution to law. Postmedia News spoke to him about his commitment to sustainable practices.

Q: You were among the lawyers litigating against oil giant Exxon over its 1989 oil spill. That experience led to the creation of SP and the desire to help corporations 'do the right thing.' How is that working for you?

CBC Ottawa Morning: Alex Wood on Eco Fees

To listen to the broadcast go to the CBC Ottawa Morning story archive and select Eco Fees from July 21st.

Pavan Sukhdev on Corporate Knights: The Invisible Economy

Watch Pavan Sukhdev's (head of the United Nations Environment Programme Green Economy initiative) interview with news magazine Corporate Knights, filmed earlier this year (May 2010) during Mr. Sukhdev's Canadian tour organized by Sustainable Prosperity.
 
In the video, he explains the problems of a global economy that ignores nature and its services. Why do our governments and corporations value some things and not others? Mr. Sukhdev makes the case for the real value of our environment.

 

Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun: B.C.'s carbon tax is looking like a winner

(Ottawa Citizen July 27, 2010) (Vancouver Sun July 28, 2010)
By Stewart Elgie, Nic Rivers and Nancy Olewiler, Citizen Special

 It's hard to tell which has sunk lower: BP's share price or the prospects for government action on climate change. Despite daily reminders of the growing costs of oil addiction -- from blackened Louisiana shorelines to the rapidly melting Arctic -- climate change seems to have dropped off global leaders' agendas. The recent G20 declaration paid lip service to the issue, the U.S. Congress seems increasingly unlikely to pass a climate bill this year, and Canada's official policy position is to say "after you" to the U.S.

The Hill Times: Politicians should deal with climate change, create a stronger economy

(July 19, 2010) DAVID CRANE

If we are looking for economic stimulus to drive innovation and create new jobs, then launching a transformative shift to a low-carbon economy may be our best hope.

TORONTO—If we are looking for economic stimulus to drive innovation and create new jobs, then launching a transformative shift to a low-carbon economy may be our best hope. While the Harper government consistently portrays the environment and the economy as competing interests, in fact there is a positive, not negative, relationship between the two. Dealing with climate change will give us a different but stronger economy.

The Globe and Mail: Don't give up on tolls yet

(July 10, 2010) MARCUS GEE

Should governments bring in new road tolls, gas taxes or parking fees to pay for transit and reduce congestion in the Toronto region? At first blush, the idea hasn't a snowball's chance on a Toronto sidewalk. No serious politician wants to be caught proposing tolls and taxes in an election year.

In the contest for mayor, only marginal candidates with nothing to lose such as Sarah Thomson have been willing to plump for them. Joe Pantalone, Rocco Rossi and Rob Ford have firmly ruled them out. George Smitherman at first said he was open to talking about tolls, then brought in a plan to pay for transit expansion without them.

At the provincial level, a Liberal government struggling to sell the HST is hardly likely to hand its Conservative rivals a gift by coming out for new taxes as well.

The Globe and Mail - A tool to meet the productivity challenge: carbon pricing

(July 9, 2010) ROGER MARTIN AND ALEXANDER WOOD

Roger Martin is dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and director of the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship. Alexander Wood is senior director for policy and markets at Sustainable Prosperity in Ottawa.

With Canada having hosted the G8/G20, much needed attention should now be given to a number of challenges facing the Canadian economy in the coming years. The first is our woeful productivity performance, and the second is climate change.

The two will have an impact on our future prosperity, and both are - in ways that are not always well understood - linked.
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