Forbidden to text while driving, you can waste your time checking the fluctuating price of gas at every gas station you see and how at each station it differs from yesterday. All you will learn is that the price shifts up and down over space and time – the operation of that seductive beast called the market – with corresponding effects on your pocketbook or credit card balance.

To address today’s issues of climate change, environmental degradation, and inequality, we must construct more local and resilient economies, and take back ownership of our resources.

This is the key message in a ground breaking new book, The Resilience Imperative, by Michael Lewis and Pat Conaty. The authors provide examples of cooperative and inclusive ownership models for community control of energy, housing, food production, manufacturing, finance, and social services from many countries. People all over the world are trying to recover local control over their resources and productive assets, reacting to the growing ownership of these assets by international capital, and the trade deals that protect these investments.

Earlier this week, Andrew Jackson, senior policy advisor to the Broadbent Institute, wrote a thoughtful and constructively critical analysis of the Ecofiscal Commission’s first report.  My first response is: thank you, Andrew.  Jackson’s piece epitomizes the much-needed evolution of the debate around climate policy in Canada.  It moves us squarely to the discussion we should be having:  not if we need better policies, but how they should be designed.

Tuesday’s U.S.-China climate deal has been hailed widely as an “historic deal” that dramatically changes the dynamics of international climate politics as countries search for a new global agreement by the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Climate Convention in Paris in 2015.

Clearly it is a welcome development in a number of senses: it involves a very public commitment from the world’s largest emitters that will be hard to renege on; it puts pressure on other countries that have not already made pledges (many already have) to reduce emissions, or to up the ambition of their pledges in some cases; and it can act to create further trust amongst countries that the major emitters are negotiating in good faith building momentum towards Paris.

If it is to transition to a green economy, Canada must end the continued subsidization of fossil fuels. These subsidies come at the expense of the public purse and favour the development of carbon-intensive energy options over cleaner, low-carbon options such as wind, solar and biomass more deserving of public funds.

Editor's note: In advance of the National Forum on Clean Energy and Industry taking place on October 3rd in Ottawa, the Broadbent Institute will be featuring a series of blog posts exploring policy options for transitioning to a green economy. 

A global shift to renewable energy is urgently needed to avoid catastrophic climate change and to provide the basis for a resilient and inclusive economy. We know this. We also know Canada lags far behind other countries in beginning this shift.

Editor's note: In advance of the National Forum on Clean Energy and Industry taking place on October 3rd in Ottawa, the Broadbent Institute will be featuring a series of blog posts focused on policy options for transitioning to a green economy. 

If Canada is to move more rapidly towards a green economy, a massive change is needed in the transport sector.

This applies both to the types of transit we use and to the energy sources we use to power us. Managing this transition effectively requires that planners also address equity concerns, to ensure that new transport technologies and modes are affordable for all segments of society.

The race is on. Monday’s U.N. climate summit, entitled “catalyzing action”, was designed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a sort of opening stage of the Tour de France, which like that epic race, ends in Paris.

Premiers have been working on collaborative energy strategies in one form or another since 2007, and their energy conversation now looks like it’s poised to continue for another year. But despite its frequent appearance on the Council of the Federation’s agenda, it’s fair to ask why Canada needs a national strategy for energy at all.

Any kind of Canada-wide “strategy” risks sounding like more talk than action. And with Canada often described as an energy powerhouse — boasting not just the world’s third largest oil reserves but the world’s third largest hydropower generation capacity — what would a strategy add that we’re not already doing?