The Embarassment that is Canada's Environmental Record

By BJ

I never paid a whole lot of attention to the climate talks in Poland last week, since they seem to be mainly a exercise in political hot air, but a couple of stories from the summit did catch my attention, mostly because they relate to the home country and our positively pitiful performance when it comes to Climate Change matters. In this, I can agree with Green Party leader Elizabeth May, it is a "mark of shame".

Environmental groups have criticized Canada for its plans to use 2006 as a base year for calculating greenhouse gas emission reductions, instead of the year 1990, as outlined in the Kyoto agreement.

The Climate Change Performance Index, an assessment compiled by environmental groups Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe, ranked Canada second last out of the 57 largest greenhouse-gas emitters in its performance in fighting climate change, ahead of only Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the only country we could manage to beat in fighting Climate Change? I'd really like to insert some smart-ass remark about people who like religious theocracies dependent on oil wealth for their survival, but the truth is that this is an across-the-board failure in regards to our political spectrum. We had a Liberal government for over a decade who made many of the right noises on the international stage, but made no more actual progress on the matter than the Conservatives who've replaced them. At least the Conservatives are more upfront about their not giving a damn.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice said the government's decision to not send one of Canada's leading scientists to the international climate talks wrapping up in Poland Friday was financial, not political.

Senior Environment Canada scientist Don MacIver was scheduled to deliver a speech Dec. 5 as part of his role as the chair of the organizing committee for the World Meteorological Organization's climate conference.

MacIver's travel costs were to be covered by the WMO, but Ottawa declined to give him permission to attend.

On the scale of ridiculously transparent excuses, claiming that you want to save money by refusing travel for someone whose travel you weren't even paying for has to be somewhere near the top. I figure it has to be one of those cases where they are so used to lying about everything, they just can't help themselves anymore, even when the lie is so obviously blatant.

In any case, it is pretty clear that science is of low priority with our government, which given we're one of the nations where the effects of Climate Change are already apparent, is an abysmal state of affairs.

Comments

[Peter G.]

Of course when you're living in a vast thinly populated cold country that is heavily engaged in resource extraction and other such energy intensive activities expecting to make the top ten is expecting rather too much. I'd pay more attention to May if she could offer solutions that don't usually involve everyone else sacrificing their livelihood.

[BJ Bjornson]

Given May has as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as I do these days, I pay very little attention to her ideas myself. And it is certainly true that our climate and geographical realities, not to mention the resource extraction, means we're not likely to be a poster child for low CO2 emissions any time soon, but the index noted in the post is based upon what actions we've taken as a nation to reduce our impact, not what the impact itself is. To be near dead last is indicative that we're not even trying. That is embarrassing. And resetting the baseline because you've ignored the problem up until now isn't exactly confidence inspiring either, though the coming economic slowdown will probably allow the government to claim they are on- or above-target this way.

[Peter G.]

Now that depends on how you measure what steps have been taken and which ones you count. I couldn't help but notice that the massive changes in building codes that improved energy efficiency and fire proofing weren't really counted perhaps because they vary by province. On the whole I put little faith in these sort of surveys precisely because they are not very scientific. Which is not to say we don't have a lot to do. Clearly we do.