Do you remember the old axiom "think globally, act locally"? These words are truer today than ever before, especially when applied to Canada's battle against climate change. To see real action on climate change in Canada and the U.S., it is best to look at what is taking place at the municipal and provincial levels in both countries.
I was recently in Seattle with former U.S. President, Bill Clinton and via-teleconference, Ex-Vice-President Al Gore, as part of a U.S. mayors' conference. The mayors of the two largest American cities, New York and Los Angeles joined the more than 150 mayors who attended the gathering. What makes this so special? Those participants represented more than 700 mayors who have signed an agreement promising to meet or beat the Kyoto targets of 2012. All of them together represent over one-third of that country's population.
Those mayors want to reduce their cities' greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, but say they cannot do it alone. Although mayors from both countries need help from their federal governments, they are already joining forces to take action.
The Midwest Global Warming Pact, for example, includes nine Midwestern states—including big polluters like Illinois and Michigan—and Manitoba. They join two other groups of states and provinces that are already working together on this cross-border issue.
In Seattle it was inspiring to see so many leaders get together to think about ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It reminded me of those old movies I saw as a child, when the heroes would band together to defeat the villain. But as inspiring as this mayors' conferences was, other conferences are less so.
Take last month's Commonwealth summit in Kampala, Uganda, for example where the prime minister called Kyoto a "mistake" because it only includes targets for wealthy industrialized countries. This was not only an attack on the Protocol but on the Climate Convention itself, which is the cornerstone of the UN's multilateral efforts to prevent global warming.
This past September at the APEC meetings in Sydney, leaders of the U.S., Australia and Canada, who had long questioned the reality of human-induced climate change, announced a new path to meet the challenge of global warming. Their three solutions? Aspirational targets, technology and reduced energy intensity.
Previous Canadian governments sought to achieve reductions by "voluntary compliance," which differs little from "aspirational targets". Basically, this approach requires the government to politely ask corporations to begin reducing emissions for the greater good. It doesn't work.
The second option is also great for leaders who want to delay action: tell citizens not to worry because we'll find some marvelous new invention that will allow us to continue with business as usual. Unfortunately, most forms of technology take years to mature and usually create other, unforeseen problems. The final idea centers on "intensity", the total energy used per amount of production or widget manufactured. Reducing intensity means using less energy per unit. But if intensity is reduced while the amount of production continues to climb, total emissions will increase.
None of these ideas is a serious attempt to reduce emissions.
And it looks bad on the world's stage that Canada is seriously pushing these approaches. As the only nation to have legally agreed to the Kyoto target and then reneged on it, Canada enters the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference negotiations in Bali with severely weakened credibility.
Canada will also arrive in Bali with an emission-reduction plan that four independent analyses have found will not even meet the government's targets that it has substituted for Kyoto's goals. Canada remains one of the few holdouts in the industrialized world to avoid a serious commitment on climate change. Any effort to persuade other major emitters to take on new commitments will surely be hampered by the government's rejection of its own existing obligations.
Canada's lack of real effort to reduce its own emissions means it is ill-suited to lecture developing countries on their responsibilities — especially countries with a tiny fraction of the wealth and emissions per person that this country possesses. With help from wealthy countries, developing nations can do more to shift to a low-emission energy path. But coming from Canada, with its current record, this message smacks of hypocrisy and will only harden resistance.
The Bali conference provides an unparalleled opportunity for the Canadian government to bring its climate policies in line with its rhetoric. Perhaps it's time for the government to take some lessons from its little brothers in the city halls and provincial legislatures.
