This week and next, world leaders are meeting in Durban, South Africa for the 17th year in a row to talk climate change at the Conference of the Parties (COP17). The biggest unofficial delegation there is the Canadian Youth Delegation, part of the Youth Climate Coalition, which includes Haligonian Robin Tress, a recent Dalhousie environmental science grad.
“I became acquainted with the devastation of climate change in school,” Tress says. “I couldn’t not take action.”
Last year she attended COP16 in Mexico and became interested in bringing the story of climate change negotiation—particularly our country’s shameful role—back home: “I think Canadians have a fundamental misunderstanding of Harper’s climate action.
“Our government policies make it look like climate change is not so bad, because we’re doing so little about it,” she says. “People don’t understand how bad it is already, except where it’s really obvious in coastal communities and in the Arctic.”
Next year the only legally binding agreement negotiators have ever come up with, the Kyoto Protocol, expires. They’ve got a western black rhino’s chance of extending or replacing Kyoto, thanks to interference run by Canada, Russia and Japan.
“They refuse to sign a second commitment period for Kyoto,” Tress says, “which has influenced 54 other countries and stopped them from signing too.” Largely because of Canada’s stalling, the best possible COP17 outcome will be further amendments to a new climate agreement, which has been in the works since 2005 but is incomplete.
The world came close to a “fair, ambitious and binding” deal at COP15 in Copenhagen, but a few holdout countries like Canada and the US monkey-wrenched it at the 11th hour. A watered-down deal was signed instead. President Obama fled the scene after spending less than a day in Denmark.
“The longer Canada stalls, the longer it takes for the world to agree,” Tress says now. In reviewing our nation’s historical contribution to prevent catastrophic climate change, she notes that we played a prominent positive role until COP12 in Nairobi. That was 2006, the same year Harper’s Conservative Party assumed power. Since then, “things have reversed.”
The good news is almost every other country in the world wants to do the right thing. Tress says she has observed an increasing level of frustration over Canada’s climate crimes. “I’m concerned we’ll be kicked out of the conference. Not our proudest moment.”
But there is too much on the line to fret over pride. The status quo (staying the course that’s seen Canadian greenhouse-gas emissions increase 27 percent since 1990), will result in the “deaths of millions, loss of land, mass human migration, flooding, drought, famine—a clusterfuck,” Tress says.
According to the World Health Organization, 150,000 people are already dying each year from climate change. An ambitious, legally binding international agreement is essential if there is any hope of reducing— rather than massively increasing—that number, and potentially unhinging the conditions that make the planet livable at all.
“If Canada getting kicked out resulted in a global deal on emissions reductions, I’d be all for it,” Tress says.
She also observes that the conference itself has an environmental impact, and that an industry has grown up around climate change policy making. Outside the official negotiation rooms in Durban is a gathering called Dirty Energy Week, where more than 100 non-profits and activists have described COP a “conference of polluters,” soaked in oil and greed, flying in for a two-week circus, making a mess and leaving.
“It’s not the be-all-end-all,” says Tress. “We need community-based solutions too, provincial laws on carbon footprint, bilateral and multilateral agreements—you usually get fairer results from regional agreements.”
But, as a citizen of a country that is compromising humanity’s future, knowing the consequences of having no legally binding protocol to set a baseline for the world and by which to hold all nations accountable, she feels compelled to be there. “Canadians shouldn’t be fooled into thinking we’re peacekeepers,” she says. “Since 2006 our international reputation has gone down the toilet.”
She has twice been verbally accosted for representing Canada at climate negotiations, once by an immigration official. “He was upset because our climate action plans really only take effect in 2020—after the window of opportunity has closed.”
This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2011.
You write : ” The world came close to a “fair, ambitious and binding” deal at COP15 in Copenhagen, but a few holdout countries like Canada and the US monkey-wrenched it at the 11th hour. A watered-down deal was signed instead. President Obama fled the scene after spending less than a day in Denmark.”
Why do you deliberately omit any mention of China ? When Obama went to a meeting with other heads of state he discovered some low level Chinese civil servant was there to talk with him. The Chinese Premier had left town and snubbed POTUS.
Canada was a bit player and the same applies this year. The EU is speaking with one voice through the Poles and wants a legally binding agreement for all countries.
Stop writing rubbish and make an effort to present facts.
Canada will pull out of Kyoto but still wants Less Developed Countries to still put the brakes on their development and limit their emissions. Sadly this government only attends UN Climate Negotiations to protect one thing the tar sands. Not the future of Canada, not the future lives which will be lost or the economic impacts that climate change will cause but to protect a domestic oil industry which the PM used to work for.
Adam : here is the EU position. Canada has the same position as the EU.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/30…
Quote : ” Europe is taking the toughest negotiating stand it has ever adopted on global warming. At this week’s UN climate talks in Durban, the bloc will depart from decades of “dovish” practice by insisting stiff conditions must be met by China and other developing countries if a global climate treaty is to be arranged. “
You need to enlarge your media universe.
See my problem here is that if I speak for what is right I and working against my own best interests, see this is where ya loose canadian. We fought hard to have what we have. And we took nothing from anyone that was not given willingly at the time, we treat each other fairly for the most part, and I’ll be damned if im going to live a less comphy lifestyle because of what is right. Don’t even try to tell me the less fortunate would do any less because that is the core of that ideal. To long for something someone else has, not to strive to attain their own things or status, they want us to do the work for less, yet they get some of out fruits, see though most people are unable to explain things so idiots can understand, it does not disqualify them from their rights or give you governance over their morality.
COP15 in Copenhagen was a failure due to the Nov 2009 release of internal emails from the top climate scientists. Durban was a failure because of the November 2011 release of internal emails from the same climate scientists. These emails give a pretty good look at the real climate science taking place. Yesterday some bloggers hard drives were confiscated in the U.K as part of the search for who ever is leaking these emails to the internet. Turns out the U.S Dept of Justice is behind the raid on these bloggers. Why? Could be a number of reasons but the person leaking these emails has indicated there are still 220,000 emails in their possession. Wonder whats in them that would have the U.S DOJ so interested in emails from a U.K University.