Canada moves to lower greenhouse target, critics say
BY SARAH MCGINNIS | CANWEST NEWS SERVICE in Canada.com | JANUARY 30, 2010
Calgary — As Canada filed its official Copenhagen Accord papers on Saturday, the Harper government appeared to move away from a three-year-old climate change target.
Federal Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice announced Canada's formal registration of Canada's emissions reductions target with the United Nations at the Harry Hays Building in Calgary. Photograph by: Colleen De Neve, The Calgary Herald
Although it is a small change, critics seized on the new plan as less ambitious than what Harper government previously promised. And they argue there’s still no clear understanding of how the government will reach any greenhouse gas reduction target.
“It’s another broken promise by this government on the environment. This target is considerably weaker than the one they have been talking about for the past three years,” said Dale Marshall of the David Suzuki Foundation.
At a low-key news conference in Calgary, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said Canada’s new goal is to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent below its 2005 levels by 2020. He said this puts Canada’s target in step with what is planned in the U.S.
However, this is a change from policy announced in April 2007, when the Harper government announced it would cut the country’s emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.
While offering no details, Prentice said he was confident Canada could meet its new commitment.
“The unfulfilled promise of Kyoto we leave behind us. This is an approach that will work. It will only work if everyone who emits carbon puts forward their reduction obligations and does so in the way Canada has today,” Prentice said.
Saturday’s target was unveiled as part of Canada’s formal submission to the Copenhagen Accord, a controversial pact to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions authored at an international conference late last year.
The agreement is not legally binding.
“Canada is committed to the Copenhagen Accord. This is the framework that Canada sought. It is a framework that applies to everyone who emits carbon and is therefore an approach that has the prospect of success,” Prentice said Saturday.
Canada filed its targets with the United Nations one day before a final deadline.
But environmentalists lambasted the new approach.
The biggest concern is the change in the year the government will base its new targets on, said Greenpeace spokesman Dave Martin.
According to Ottawa’s 2007 Greenhouse Gas Inventory, this country produced 718 megatonnes of emissions in 2006.
The original 20 per cent cut Harper had promised based on 2006 figures would bring national emissions slightly below 1990 levels — but not enough to meet its Kyoto obligations.
Saturday’s announcement changes the plan going forward.
For a variety of reasons, Canada’s emissions in 2005 were actually higher than 2006 — at 731 megatonnes.
So the 17 per cent cut Prentice promised Saturday would bring levels down to 606.73 megatonnes — which is actually 2.5 per cent higher than 1990 levels.
Given that Canada has already backed away from the Kyoto accord, where this country promised to reduce 1990 emissions by six per cent by 2012, the latest targets raise serious issues about whether these new agreements will be also met, Martin said.
“Trust is a huge issue here. Not only have they reneged on their target . . . Now, we have a whole new target. It’s heading in exactly the wrong direction from where we need to head,” said Martin.
Prentice did not address the change in baseline years Saturday other than to say the federal government has actively sought to align its clean energy and climate change policies with those of the Obama administration.
The U.S. government has based its targets on its own 2005 emissions.
Prentice said the Canadian government will continue to co-operate on a “continental basis” on how to address passenger vehicles and other emitters, said Prentice.
“We will continue to deal with those on a continental basis because we occupy the same economic space, the same environmental space and the same energy marketplace on a continental basis with the United States,” Prentice said.
Although 1990 is seen as a key base year for reducing targets by European countries and those in environmental circles, the Harper government does not give it the same recognition.
Canada, officials often note, has seen a massive economic expansion and around 20 per cent population growth since 1990, where other countries have seen populations plateau.
While 1990 is politically convenient for the growth patterns in some developed countries, it’s politically inconvenient for Canada.
“Canada has a tough period behind it in terms that Canada did rise and ratify the Kyoto Protocol but its main trading partner the United States, did not, which left it in a very unbalanced situation,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change in Copenhagen last month.
Although Canada said it would abide by the terms of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, its greenhouse gas emissions actually increased by about 26 per cent between 1990 and 2007. The U.S. never ratified Kyoto.
Canada’s new targets show the Harper government is more concerned with following U.S. policies than meeting its previous international commitments, said Andrew Weaver, University of Victoria research chair and climatologist.
“We heard when the Harper administration came in, that we were going to have a made-in-Canada solution . . . Now what they’re saying is ‘we don’t want Kyoto. We don’t want a made in Canada solution. We want a made in the US solution’,” said Weaver.
Establishing similar emissions targets as the U.S. does not mean Canada remains in step with its southern counterparts, said Linda Duncan, environment critic for the federal NDP.
The Obama administration has been pushing for substantive rules in its House and Senate. But Prentice has yet to table anything before the Canadian legislature demonstrating how he will meet climate change targets, said Duncan.
“We need to have this government step up to the plate and get moving,” Duncan said Saturday. “As Canadians, we have a right to know what the rules are so that people can begin re-investing in the economy again.”
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1 comment:
Well I think critics work is just to speak out and bring something to our attention. Now its up to us to use our brain and take decision are they right or wrong??
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