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OTTAWA – Canada needs to go far beyond its Kyoto targets if it is to meaningfully address climate change, says a new report from the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute.
Released less than a week before Canada hosts a major international conference on climate change, the report shows Canada needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.
“Preventing dangerous climate change requires all industrialized countries to make reductions on this scale,” said report author Dr. Matthew Bramley, director of the Pembina Institute’s climate change program. “Anything less, and Canada will fail to pull its weight internationally. Other governments have already adopted targets like these, and to be a leader, Canada must too.”
The report comes at a critical juncture as Canada gets ready to host the biggest and most important climate change conference the world has seen since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997. More than 10,000 delegates from close to 200 countries are expected to attend the conference, which is being held in Montreal from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9.
One of the key issues under discussion will be what happens after 2012 when the first set of Kyoto targets has expired.
“The report shows why it’s critical that Canada define its post-2012 climate policy and commit to deep, long-term cuts in greenhouse gas pollution,” said Dale Marshall, the David Suzuki Foundation’s Ottawa-based climate change policy analyst. “There is no better moment for Canada to show real leadership at the global level than right now.”
The report pulls together the latest research and analysis on the maximum levels that greenhouse gas concentrations can be allowed to reach in the atmosphere in order to prevent dangerous climate change, and the resulting emission reductions that industrialized countries like Canada must make in order to stay within those levels.
The report concludes that only deep, long-term emission cuts will prevent the dangerous impacts of climate change. Simply halting the rise of greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to stabilize the concentration of gases that have built up in the atmosphere.
“It is essential to reach a broad international agreement that will result in much larger greenhouse gas reductions after 2012,” said Dr. Bramley.
Under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has agreed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions six per cent by 2012. But the federal government has not made any commitments regarding the far deeper reduction targets that will be needed after the first set of Kyoto targets expires in 2012. In other words, Canada’s current climate change policy will end abruptly on January 1, 2013.
As well as setting out post-2012 greenhouse gas targets for Canada, the new Pembina/Suzuki report explains how the country should approach the international negotiations around this issue.
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More information:
Download the full report or a short summary.
Dale Marshall
Climate change policy analyst
David Suzuki Foundation
613-594-8839
Cell: 613-302-9913
Dr. Matthew Bramley
Director, climate change
Pembina Institute
819-483-6288, ext. 26
Cell: 819-210-6115
Sarah Marchildon
Communications specialist
David Suzuki Foundation
604-732-4228, ext. 237