Even the most conservative corporate interests come around when they finally understand that this will effect the bottom line more than just about anything.
Even the Canadian Council of Chief Executives is calling for absolute emission reductions AND endorses “environment taxes” e.g., our carbon tax…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071001.wrceos1001/BNStory/specialComment/
Climate change top issue, CEOs declare
From Monday’s Globe and Mail
October 1, 2007 at 1:52 AM EDT
OTTAWA — Canada’s top chief executive officers have reached an “unprecedented consensus” on the need to combat global warming and their obligation to do more to help.
Monday morning, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives is releasing a declaration calling climate change “the most pressing and daunting issue” today, and acknowledging the need for “aggressive” action including “absolute” emission cuts. It’s the clearest signal ever sent by a broad coalition of Canadian businesses that they embrace the fight against climate change and accept the need for emission cut targets.
Even more significant: the CEOs acknowledge a necessary part of the battle will be government intervention to raise energy prices as a means of influencing consumption. “We share the goal of slowing, stopping and reversing the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions over the shortest period of time that is reasonably achievable,” the 150 CEOs announce in a declaration obtained by The Globe and Mail.
They say they’re confident that technology investment – spurred by incentives – could help Canada become a leader in trimming emissions output. But the CEOs acknowledge that governments must step in with an emissions trading market or even something most of them don’t welcome: environment taxes.
They say even without government intervention in markets, consumer preferences are shifting toward more environmentally friendly alternatives, but market forces alone are unlikely enough to meet the challenge of climate change.”
The declaration is an attempt by the CEO group, whose companies generate more than $800-billion in revenue a year, to secure a greater role in the national debate on tackling climate change.
“It’s meant to go on the offensive in a positive way as opposed to being in a defensive position where I think the industry has been for the past [few] years,” said Thomas d’Aquino, Council of Chief Executives president.
A key goal in this public embrace of the battle against global warming is to forestall measures from current or future governments that would unduly penalize the Canadian economy.
Both Ottawa’s minority Parliament and provinces are divided over what sort of policies are best to reduce greenhouse gas output.
“Unless we pull together and get a degree of consensus in the country … Canada will continue to be mired in this highly destructive, non-productive debate that eventually will lead to – I don’t know – maybe Draconian regulations that make no sense whatsoever,” Mr. d’Aquino said.
However, there is still plenty of time to influence the direction of Canada’s climate-change abatement strategy because the Harper government is still in the process of assembling it.
After announcing that Canada could not meet the heavy emissions reduction obligations under the 1997 Kyoto treaty, the minority Harper government is trying to chart a new course to reduce greenhouse gas output over a longer period.
Once considered a global-warming skeptic, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appears more resolved to act now.
He told global leaders earlier this month that the “growing menace of climate change is one of the most important public policy challenges of our time.”
Is the author freaking kidding me? What a bunch of crap. No one in their right mind can actually think that Stephen Harper has any intention whatsoever of doing a damn thing about climate change.
The CEO task force that drew up the declaration, co-chaired by Alcan Inc.’s Richard Evans and Suncor Energy Inc.’s Rick George, also sounds the alarm about the lack of a coherent national strategy to combat climate change, saying it’s undermined by conflict between the provinces and Ottawa.
Finally, the CEO group cautions, if real gains are to be achieved on climate change, any long-term plan must include all countries that are major emitters.
More shocking news from Bush and Harper
http://www.thestar.com/article/261743
Bush’s green plan ‘disappointing’
Lacks any new domestic initiatives to curb greenhouse gases, environmentalists say
September 29, 2007
Tim Harper
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON–U.S. President George W. Bush has called for an international fund to develop technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions, part of a White House bid to reshape the global environmental debate following the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol.
Bush, however, offered no new domestic initiatives in a speech to the world’s biggest polluters meeting here and appears to have only further isolated his government from the approach favoured by most of the rest of the world.
Bush will not endorse mandatory emission cuts and his speech yesterday was panned by many European delegates, environmentalists and even onetime allies.
“Our guiding principle is clear,” Bush said. “We must lead the world to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and we must do it in a way that does not undermine economic growth or prevent nations from delivering greater prosperity for their people.”
That has essentially been the Bush policy since he decided early in his first term that he would not commit the U.S. to the United Nations-brokered Kyoto Protocol.
“I’m interested in … effective policies,” said Bush, who used most of his speech to recite a litany of existing U.S. policies. “I want to get the job done. We’ve identified a problem, let’s go solve it together.”
Environment Minister John Baird, who represented Canada at the two-day meeting of major polluters, said he sensed a new focus and urgency to the matter on the part of a Bush administration that has been roundly accused of dragging its feet on the issue. “Our emissions are up 33 per cent above Kyoto levels and the U.S. is only up 18 per cent, so I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere by lecturing or passing judgment,” he said.
Most thought Bush’s late conversion to the climate-change debate undermined any message he sought to deliver.
Samuel Thernstrom, the communications director at the White House council on environmental quality during the first Bush term, said the president missed a chance to offer a bold new initiative.
“You were left looking for a little more here, something that would make other countries sit up and take notice and say something is happening here,” said Thernstrom, now a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“He has disappointed before. I can’t say he hasn’t done it again.”
Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said Bush had an opportunity here to take some decisive action, but his lack of action had turned it into a “sideshow.”
“Despite a few hopeful signs that he had changed his mind, the president stuck with the shrinking group of climate change dead-enders who are still fighting against a new, binding treaty.”
Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley), the NDP environment critic, was meeting with congressional leaders while Baird was at the U.S. meeting and he said he came away even more convinced that the Bush conference was merely an attempt by the U.S. president to appear to be doing something.
“One can be forgiven for being cynical about this,” he said. “Why Stephen Harper is giving cover to a discredited administration is beyond me. He is using Canada’s good name to try to lend some legitimacy to a process which has none.”
Daniel Weiss, director of climate strategy for the liberal Centre for American Progress, said Bush was proposing nothing but a grab bag of small strategies dependent on waving “a magic technology wand.”
A wonderful article on what is not being talked about enough in this election.
Leaders fumble green ball
September 28, 2007
Kathleen O’Hara
Are we all living on the same planet, being exposed to the same frightening information about climate change? Based on the provincial election campaign so far, I wonder. You would think that the status quo is fundamentally fine, but just needs adjusting. Far from it.
There is no shortage of reminders about the crisis we face. Lester R. Brown of the Earth Policy Institute wrote: “Saving civilization means restructuring the economy – and at wartime speed.” Author Jeremy Rifkin states: “There are rare moments in history when a generation of human beings are given a new gift with which to rearrange their relationship to one another and the world around them. This is such a moment.”
Yet, I detect no real appreciation of this “moment” from our provincial campaign, no sense of urgency, no vision of a relatively carbon-free future. During the leaders’ debate, no one picked up the green ball and ran with it. The closest thing to inspiration was Howard Hampton saying we needed “leadership” on the issue of global warming.
This leadership vacuum is tragic because, in spite of the fact that many of us support the crucial transition to green, it isn’t going as well as it could or should. Instead of confronting the Earth’s crisis in a co-operative, enlightened way, some are using it to make a questionable buck. Take wind power. Who would have thought it could be controversial? Harvesting energy from thin air without drilling, refining, transporting. No need to exploit foreign resources, no wars or occupations. It sounded like a godsend.
But controversial it is – from the islands near Kingston to Atlantic Canada to Australia, the U.K. and India. People are protesting against the turbine “monstrosities,” “the juggernaut which runs roughshod, unchecked over some of our loveliest land,” “the resources exploitation and industrial domination over our territory.”
Over the summer, the proposed introduction of what one opponent called “industrial scale wind plants” on nearby Wolfe and Amherst Islands divided these quiet, rural communities. Some residents secretly leased their land to Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. so that the Calgary-based company could install more than 80 steel turbines on each island.
Dividing families and friends, the company’s methodology was far from green. Anti-wind-plant protest groups were formed. On Wolfe Island, opponents were worried about the distance of the 90-metre-tall turbines from homes, a wetland and bird migratory routes. After taking a township bylaw to the Ontario Municipal Board, the setbacks were increased, much to the relief of many. The issue is still festering on Amherst Island.
These controversies illustrate that our society hasn’t learned anything about how we have reached today’s crisis, how running roughshod over lives and resources just doesn’t work. The fact is that we can’t simply create new sources of energy; we must create a new kind of society – by building and designing our new systems in humane, democratic ways with strict regulations and community input.
Rifkin warns that we can’t allow our energy future to be hijacked by profit-driven corporations the way the Internet was. “The great promise of the Net … has been compromised, at every step of the way, by commercial interests determined to gain a foothold over the medium.”
Yes, the world is getting off to a rocky start when it comes to “saving civilization.” Here in Ontario, it doesn’t look like any person or party is going to lead us out of the increasingly hot wilderness – no matter what the election outcome. That is a disgrace when so much is at stake.
Yet another example of why I am embarrassed that Harper represents Canada on the international stage
I feel like I need to apologize for things like this:
http://www.thestar.com/article/261475
Canada defends presence at climate talks
September 28, 2007
Tim Harper
WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON–The Bush administration has opened a two-day climate change conference here fighting off charges it is undermining the United Nations and choosing voluntary goals over mandatory cuts in a post-Kyoto world.
Canada was among 18 participants huddled for two days of talks at the U.S. State Department. Environment Minister John Baird said the meeting was key because it showed American engagement in finding global warming solutions.
Is this not the funniest thing you have ever heard? Like honestly, how can anyone, after the last 7 years of George Bush, and his Clear Skies Act and Healthy Forests Initiative, how can anyone claim that the U.S. wants to find global warming solutions. Sorry Mr. Baird, but this is nothing more than an outright lie.
But many critics suggested it was an 11th-hour bid for credibility on climate change from a lame-duck administration that has none on this issue.
Ya think?
“For so long, people said they wanted to see U.S. engagement. We’ve got U.S. engagement,” Baird said.
“Is it perfect? None of us around this table are perfect.”
Sigh….simply pathetic.
He said Ottawa was not throwing in its lot on climate change with the Bush administration, but was joining with the other participants, which comprise about two-thirds of the global population, produce 80 per cent of the global economy and are responsible for about 80 per cent of global emissions.
“Unless we get the active participation of the United States, China, India, this isn’t going to be successful at the end of the day,” he said.
Bush will address the conference today, but the meeting fired passions even in his absence.
Some 49 demonstrators were arrested yesterday and a Canadian environmentalist lashed out at Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Baird, telling international reporters the two did not represent the Canadian view on global warming and that the Prime Minister considered the Kyoto Protocol to be a socialist plot.
Very true, on both points.
Steven Guilbault of the Montreal-based Équiterre told a press conference organized by an alternative summit of international non-governmental organizations, that Harper and Baird are using dishonest base lines when they talk of cutting emissions.
“The truth for Mr. Baird and the Harper government is a very relative thing,” he said.
“I would invite delegates from every country in the world to put pressure on Canada. This government does not represent Canadians.”
Guilbault also said Harper believes NGOs had invented the climate change challenge and does not believe in the science of climate change.
Although Europeans were represented at this meeting, they brought with them much skepticism.
German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told German radio he could not be too concerned about the Bush emphasis on green technology and “flexibility” among nations.
“We all know that they will be out of office in a few months,” he said of the Bush administration.
After the first day of the meeting, Gabriel tempered his remarks, saying it was positive that Washington was at least involved in negotiations.
In her opening remarks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S., as a major economy and a major emitter, “takes climate change very seriously.
“Climate change is a global problem and we are contributing to it, therefore, we are prepared to expand our leadership to address the challenge,” she said.
But, she added that every country must deal with its own needs, its own interests, its own sources of energy and its own domestic politics.
“This is not a one-size-fits-all effort,” she said.
Baird said Ottawa is showing leadership, trying to bring other countries on board, because nothing can be done if not collectively.
“If we could get everybody to adopt mandatory targets, obviously that would be better,” he said.
“What is it going to do to engage other countries? It is not going to take a lot of rhetoric and bellicose (talk).
“It’s not going to be done by painting anyone into a corner.”
The U.S. talks came on the heels of the UN climate meeting Monday and aims to forge a global position beyond 2012, the expiry date of the UN-brokered Kyoto Protocol, which mandates greenhouse gas cuts by industrial nations.
Bush took Washington out of Kyoto.
Before the meeting, the Bush administration launched an aggressive effort to try to counter global suspicions and give its process some needed heft.
The U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Boyden Gray, wrote an op-ed in the The Financial Times saying Bush was trying to streamline a process at the United Nations which led to an endless series of international meetings that “produce no discussion or new facts.”
Bush’s man in Ottawa, Ambassador David Wilkins, used the pages of The Globe and Mail to argue that a “diversity of solutions” from the world’s major polluters could lead to a consensus that would speed the hopes of a broader agreement at the UN.
More on Harper and the environment
http://www.thestar.com/article/260167
Harper still off-base on environment
September 25, 2007
James Travers
Ottawa
Consultants, CEOs and, yes, Conservatives insist that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. But when it comes to climate change, Stephen Harper isn’t keen to measure what he prefers others to manage.
At the United Nations yesterday, as in Australia two weeks ago, the Prime Minister skirted hard facts in repositioning Canada from near bottom of the polluter pack to top of the heap of energy giants whose love of green extends beyond the Yankee dollar. That compliments his Canada Day claim that, in every way that matters, Conservatives are putting this country back on the world stage. Heck, it might even be tolerated as harmless hyperbole if so many scary measurements weren’t being reported even as Harper promotes the hee-haw notion of laissez-faire climate-change management.
For starters, it’s pretty darned certain that Arctic sea ice is going the way of cubes in a cocktail glass. And because the ecumenical National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy says so, it’s known that the Harper government is systematically exaggerating expectations for its latest, grudging, green plan.
If candour were to slow spin, the Prime Minister would admit that far from being back, Canada is backsliding in the international theatre where the climate drama is playing. Almost as disturbing, this country is keeping bad company.
With notable variation but shared purpose, Canada is advancing with the U.S. and Australia a post-Kyoto protocol that is more inclusive and accommodating by being less demanding. More than a rubbery response to a concrete threat, that relaxed approach to safeguarding humanity’s nest contrasts with the iron fist these countries are shaking at the far less existential danger of global terrorism.
Pity the former prime minister who has to autobiographically explain why compelling evidence of an environmental death spiral was ignored while the government was otherwise engaged in a war on a tactic that, no matter how vile, has no lasting power to knock confident democracies off course. It will be even harder to persuade grandchildren that their health wasn’t worthy of economic sacrifice or as important as protecting the ruling party’s resource-rich base.
Just catching up with consensus would make those apologies unnecessary. A poll published hours before Harper’s New York speech again shows government lags behind voters on climate change. Unlike Liberals who mostly limited their effort to signing Kyoto and Tories who hope new rhetoric will erase memories of climate-change skepticism, Canadians are serious about protecting the planet.
Climate change now looms larger than health care or Afghanistan. More disquieting still for politicians juggling competing interests and prospects, the issue is no longer abstract, it’s personal. Among the interesting findings of the Harris/Decima polls is that an overwhelming majority, 68 per cent, report experiencing the effects of climate change.
Politicians put themselves at risk by shirking responsibility when public concerns become personal worries. Harper took that chance in New York by casting his government in a supporting role, leaving the lead to technological advances and market forces.
No doubt both are essential. But this prime minister, burdened as he is with a spotty record and inclined toward the easy way forward, needs to prove before the next election that he’s willing to measure and to manage what Canadians agree is most important.
Harper tried to mislead on climate change. Are you as shocked as I am?
When will people realize that Stephen Harper is an enemy of the environment.
And Environment Minister John Baird, who I have known for a few years and who is very close to my in-laws in Ottawa, may believe in the environmental movement personally, but he has chosen to sell out and put his own political ambition ahead of his personal beliefs. There is no way that you can be the Environment Minister within this government and go along with what Harper demands, and still be committed to the environmental movement.
http://www.thestar.com/article/259339
PM’s climate plan `misleading’
Government accused of exaggerating its proposals for cutting emissions in report by advisory panel
September 22, 2007
Peter Gorrie
Environment Reporter
The federal government’s latest climate change plan is badly flawed and won’t help Canada to hit its international climate change targets, its own advisory group says.
All nine programs in the plan, unveiled last month after Parliament passed a law that ordered the government to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, won’t do the job, the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy said yesterday.
“With respect to the realization of Canada’s Kyoto commitments, we conclude that the plan … will likely not allow Canada to meet those commitments,” the report states.
The highly critical report came just three days before Prime Minister Stephen Harper is to defend his government’s actions on climate change at a major UN meeting in New York.
The report accuses the Conservative government of using “systematic” exaggeration, “double accounting,” “not accurately reflecting” emissions reductions, “important inconsistency” and “overestimated” reductions to produce false conclusions about the effectiveness of its plan.
It concludes that of the nine federal climate-change programs it studied, the government had exaggerated the benefits of three and failed to produce sufficient information to support the other six.
In one example, the report says the government is wrong for claiming greenhouse gas emissions will be cut when companies that exceed pollution limits pay a penalty in a new technology fund. The fund is to invest the money in new, cleaner technologies, and the government assumes every dollar put in will produce a certain amount of reductions.
However, the Conservatives claimed a silver lining.
They noted that the 38-page report also concludes the government plan will, over time, result in significant emissions reductions. The Tories say greenhouse gas emissions will stop increasing by 2010 under their plan and will actually drop 20 per cent by 2020.
“What’s clear through this exercise is our government appears to be on the right track,” said Garry Keller, a spokesperson for Environment Minister John Baird.
What world is this guy living in? It’s truly scary how these guys can spin bad news into outright lies.
The Roundtable was required to issue its report by the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, enacted in June after the opposition parties pushed it through the Commons and Senate.
The Act gave the government 60 days to come up with a plan that would enable Canada to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Baird responded at the deadline, basically restating an earlier plan the opposition said was inadequate.
The Act then gave the Roundtable 30 days to report on whether Baird’s new plan was satisfactory. That led to yesterday’s conclusion that it does not comply with the Act.
Earlier this week, two environment groups filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of Canada asking for a ruling to say Baird’s plan doesn’t comply with the law and asking for an order to comply.
Baird noted that the report criticizes the short-term focus on Kyoto in the Act and that it states climate change should be addressed in the medium- and long-term.
The government also noted that the document said the deadlines set by the Act were too short. The Roundtable went out of its way to complain that it did not have enough time to do a thorough study, Baird said. As a result, “they had to make a lot of assumptions.”
This really comes as no surprise, since Canadians are generally intelligent.
Harper on wrong side of climate change debate: poll
Peter O’Neil, CanWest News Service
Published: Monday, September 24, 2007
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, at the United Nations Monday for a climate change summit, is running with the “wrong crowd” of international allies on the issue, according to a poll released Sunday.
The survey of 1,000 Canadians by the firm Harris/Decima, commissioned by an environmental group, indicated that six in 10 respondents (61 per cent) want Canada aligned with European countries that favour strict Kyoto-like emissions targets.
Only one-quarter agreed with the notion that Canada “should be siding with countries like the U.S. and Australia who want non-Kyoto targets.”
Harper has refused to go along with countries, primarily in Europe, who backed the Kyoto pledge to reduce emissions below 1990 levels by 2012. He has instead pledged to reduce Canada’s current emissions by 2020, and has praised efforts by countries like Australia and the U.S. to seek alternatives to the Kyoto approach.
“Canadians want our prime minister to quit running with the wrong crowd when it comes to international efforts to combat climate change,” said John Bennett, executive-director of ClimateforChange.ca, in a news release.
Harper and U.S. President George W. Bush will be among more than 80 world leaders scheduled to address the special UN session intended to accelerate global negotiations on a new climate change agreement to replace Kyoto, which expires in 2012.
The poll also indicated the environment was considered the most important issue facing Canadians, with 30 per cent choosing that issue compared to 13 per cent selecting health care, which placed second. Just under half of Quebec respondents (46 per cent) chose the environment as the top issue, compared to 19 per cent of Canadians in the prairies surveyed by the firm.
The poll was conducted last month and has an error margin of 3.2 per cent, according to Harris-Decima.
© CanWest News Service 2007
Got this a few days ago, it really sums things up nicely
The leaves may be starting to turn, but the bad air season is still with us. Ontario has now had 50 smog days for the year, and we are steadily closing the gap on the horrendous spring, summer and fall of 2005 when the province recorded more than 60 smog days in total. With muggy weather in the forecast for this week, we’ll once again have Ontario’s No. 1 smog recipe in action: dirty coal plants running full out to meet demand for cooling on days with poor air quality.
Are scrubbers the answer? Not really. These expensive end-of-pipe solutions are more like a band aid than a solution — a band aid that could cost up to $1.6 billion to install on Nanticoke alone and would reduce the total emissions of our coal plants by only 14/100ths of 1%. For the same money, we could make tremendous investments in efficiency and conservation, renewable energy and natural gas-fired combined heat and power, all of which will be dramatically cleaner than even scrubbed-up coal. And like many end-of-pipe solutions, scrubbers really just move the problem around. The little mercury they do capture, for example, ends up in ash that Ontario Power Generation sends to cement plants, which put it up the stack again.
And, of course, scrubbers do absolutely nothing about greenhouse gas emissions. And that’s one big hole in a $1.6 billion-dollar band aid solution.
The Province of Ontario has issued a legally-binding regulation which requires the complete phase-out of our dirty coal plants in 2014. Please contact John Tory and ask him if he believes that Ontario should aggressively promote energy conservation, renewable energy and natural gas-fired combined heat and power so that we can phase out coal by 2014 or sooner and keep the lights on. Mr. Tory can be reached at John.Tory@pc.ola.org.
Please pass this message on to your friends.
Thank you.
Jack Gibbons, Chair
Ontario Clean Air Alliance
402-625 Church St, Toronto M4Y 2G1
Phone: 416-926-1907 ext. 240
Fax: 416-926-1601
Email: jack@cleanairalliance.org
Website: www.cleanairalliance.org
Contest: www.PeakBusters.ca
The Ontario Clean Air Alliance is a coalition of health, environmental, and consumer organizations, faith communities, municipalities, utilities, unions, corporations and individuals working for cleaner air through a coal phase-out and the shift to a renewable electricity future. Our partner organizations represent more than six million Ontarians.
To subscribe or unsubscribe to this list please visit www.cleanair.web.ca/getin.
This is an incredibly important study called Renewable is Doable
It was conducted jointly by WWF-Canada, The Pembina Institute, Greenpeace, Ontario Clean Air Alliance and Sierra Club of Eastern Canada.
RENEWABLE IS DOABLE
Will Ontario follow other jurisdictions that are keeping the lights on by being energy-efficient (stopping energy waste) and with renewable sources (like wind, hydro, solar), or continue with dirty coal or dangerous and expensive nuclear megaprojects.
The fact is that ‘renewable is doable’. That’s the title of an authoritative study showing that a sustainable energy system is possible, and cheaper and more effective at reducing greenhouse gases than what has been recommended by the Ontario Power Authority. For more info visit www.renewableisdoable.ca
VOTE FOR CLEAN ENERGY
WWF-Canada, The Pembina Institute, Greenpeace, Ontario Clean Air Alliance and Sierra Club of Eastern Canada have called on all political parties to adopt clean, climate-friendly energy policies. Please consider the need for a clean, climate-friendly energy system in Ontario when you decide who to vote for.
Please visit www.voteforcleanenergy.ca for information and ongoing analysis, events/activities, and to sing up for the e-newsletter.
Ignoring global warming won’t make it go away. Take action now at www.saveourclimate.ca
What? John Howard, George Bush and Stephen Harper would try to undermine global climate change treaties? I don’t believe it…
Greens criticize ‘fraudulent’ APEC deal
Canadian Press
September 11, 2007 at 1:18 PM EDT
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper reached a “fraudulent” agreement on climate change with his fellow Asia-Pacific leaders, the leaders of Green parties in Canada and Australia said Tuesday.
APEC leaders agreed Saturday to a so-called “aspirational goal” of slowing, stopping and eventually reversing greenhouse gas emissions.
But the APEC meetings have always been about trade, Canadian Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said.
By trying to set the rules on climate change, the APEC leaders were attempting to circumvent United Nations talks on the environment, Ms. May argued Tuesday during a news conference.
“This is a direct effort to sabotage the upcoming meetings in Bali, Indonesia, at the 13th conference of the parties on climate change,” she said.
“(That’s) where negotiations belong, within the United Nations system.”
Ms. May and Australia’s Green party accused Mr. Harper, U.S. President George W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard of trying to diminish global efforts to fight climate change.
Australia’s environmental party, known as the Australian Greens, issued a statement Tuesday calling Canada and Australia spoilers on climate change, suggesting their governments are being swayed by the energy and logging industries in both countries.
“Prime Minister Harper is desperately trying to renege on Canada’s commitments under the Kyoto Protocol,” said Greens spokeswoman on climate change, Senator Christine Milne.
“So it’s no wonder he feels at home with Prime Minister Howard, who is equally keen to avoid any binding targets or real action to reduce emissions.”
Mr. Harper has said the Sydney declaration brings together a divided world on the issue of climate change.
Both Mr. Harper and Mr. Howard stressed that the real significance of the APEC statement was that the world’s biggest emitters – China, Russia and the United States – signed on after finding common ground.
Without specific targets or timelines, however, the declaration was immediately panned as a political stunt.
The declaration said APEC member countries would try to improve energy efficiency by at least 25 per cent by 2030.
It also called for forest cover to be increased by at least 20 million hectares by 2020 as a way of fighting climate change.
If that were achieved, the additional trees could store about 1.4 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to about 11 per cent of 2004’s global emissions, the statement said.
