U.S.-led climate agreement meaningless, deceptive

OTTAWA – Today’s announced climate pact between the United States, Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea is useless and will do nothing to reduce climate change, says the David Suzuki Foundation.

“This is a trade agreement masquerading as an environmental agreement. It’s meaningless,” says Dale Marshall, climate change policy analyst for the David Suzuki Foundation. “The science is clear – we need to reduce greenhouse pollution by upwards of 60 per cent. Yet this pact doesn’t contain targets or timelines to reduce emissions and it includes dirty fuels like coal.”

The U.S.-led pact has been positioned as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement between more than 140 countries to reduce the heat-trapping emissions that disrupt the climate. Australia and the United States are the only two OECD countries that failed to ratify Kyoto, a decision that has led to harsh criticism in the international community.

“This plan isn’t an alternative to anything,” Mr. Marshall says. “It’s a sad attempt to legitimize these countries’ lack of action on climate change. Frankly, I think it’s deliberately deceptive.”

Four of the six countries signed to the pact are major coal producers. The agreement promises to be a topic of discussion in November when then the United Nations conference on global climate change meets in Montreal. It will be the first of such meetings ever held in North America and the first since the Kyoto Protocol became international law.

“Canada should denounce this pact for what it is,” says Mr. Marshall. “We really need to step up in Montreal and lead the world in striving for stronger pollution-reduction targets.”

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For more information contact:
Dale Marshall
Climate change policy analyst
David Suzuki Foundation
Tel: 613-594-8839
Cell: 613-302-9913