Tag: emission reduction

We Put the “fun” in “Mitigashun”!

Fast Facts About Countries That Can Increase Their Ambition in Qatar!

Bonus Double Saturday Edition!

While many of you enjoyed your first full night of sleep after the Durban overtime, the Canadians had no such luck. Barely off the plane, Canada’s Environment Minister wasted no time in confirming the COP’s worst kept secret, that Canada was officially pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol.

Many delegates probably had already given up on Canada at that point, but those of us in CAN who live within that vast, beautiful, hockey-loving country have had to continue to bear witness to what can only be called the government of polluters’ puppets. Since bailing on their 9-year ratification relationship with the Kyoto Protocol, the Canadian government has only gone further downhill when it comes to climate action. The highlights lowlights:

1)A report from the government watchdog on our environment and climate goals made clear last week that it would be nearly impossible under current policy for Canada to meet its (embarrassingly weak) target of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. After all, the report said, there aren’t even any greenhouse gas regulations on Canada’s fastest growing source of pollution ¨C the oil and gas sector (read: Tar Sands). The official numbers according to the government’s own data? Current and proposed policies for emissions reductions will result in a 7% increase over 2005 levels (that's ~33% above 1990 levels) instead of the promised 17% decrease.

2)The Government ramped up McCarthyist attacks on anyone worried about numbers like these. This has included outrageous attacks on civil society, First Nations and politicians, calling them radicals, terrorists, adversaries and enemies of the people of Canada. Amazingly, there have even been accusations that environmental groups writ  large are money launderers.

(Have they seen our budgets? What's there to launder?)

3)And to make it even easier for them to do as little as possible, the 2012 federal budget bill contained “a few additional items” for quick passage without democratic debate. These included the complete repeal of Canada’s environmental assessment act and a thorough gutting of decades of environmental regulations. These deletions were misrepresented as “streamlining” of approvals processes for projects such as massive pipelines that, if built, would allow the projected tripling of tar sands growth that the government is so desperate for. It is streamlining all right ¨C streamlining the path towards climate catastrophe.

The only thing the Canadian example will prove, with its fragile Arctic, vulnerable coasts and tarred economy, is that you can't withdraw from climate change.

One thing that developed country delegates might want to report to their ministers back home is how they spent the full week talking about measuring, reporting, and verification. This was done instead of getting serious about their need to increase their levels of ambition. The signs of chronic lackofambitionitis are clear and have dire 4°C symptoms –  including rising sea levels, disruption of food production, forest fires, increasing droughts and much more.

 The gigatonne gap, which negotiators have left largely untouched in Bangkok, Bonn and again in Panama, is now up to the ministers to pick up. Of course, it can still be hidden under the carpet of a number of technical COP decisions on mitigation, but ECO can’t believe anyone will be thinking that this related disease has been even remotely addressed.

 The cure is simple but requires a steely resolve.  Acknowledging the magnitude of the gap and resolving to close it, is the first step that ministers can take as they fly to South Africa for the pre-COP. A second step would then be to move the mitigation ambition to the upper end of the pledges. Extensive research has shown that countries like Australia and the EU can both reduce the symptoms of the broader disease and improve their own economic health by moving to the upper end of their pledges. Of course, the cure requires other countries to do more and thoroughly review their pathetic low pledges. This is the case for Canada and the US neither of which is planning to reduce their emissions much below their 1990 levels. And this is also the case for countries as Russia, Ukraine and Belarus whose pledges would assume emissions that are much higher than all business-as-usual projections. Preventing the deadly effects of lackofambitionitis requires industrialized countries to move their emission reduction targets to the upper end of the 25-40% pledge that was agreed in Cancun. We know that the cure is within reach as countries like Denmark, Norway, Germany and others have shown the way and thus deserve to be recognized as leaders in a race to the top.