Another First for Canada!

First Place: Canada
"The day’s fossil award goes to Canada for blocking agreement on using 1990 as the base year. Canada is now the only country more focused on finding creative ways to hide their emission increases and make their weak targets look ambitious than solving the climate crisis. Unfortunately, those emissions linger in the atmosphere much longer than Canada’s embarrassment about them."

~ From the Climate Action Network - "a coalition of over 450 NGOs worldwide dedicated to limiting climate change to sustainable levels"- yesterday in Bangkok.

.

Harper's 'plan' is to reduce emissions 20% by 2020 using intensity-based targets. Translated, this amounts to a mere 3% reduction below our 1990 levels by 2020. Big whoop say the other countries at the conference.

.

Meanwhile back here at home, Bill C311 - the Climate Change Accountability Act establishing 1990 as the base year, is holed up at the Environment Committee (6 Cons, 3 Libs, 2 Bloc, 1 NDP) :

* A long-term target to reduce Canadian greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050
* A medium-term target to bring emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2020

First introduced by Jack Layton in 2007, it actually passed in 2008 but then was shelved before it could receive the necessary blessing from the GG when Harper called the 2008 election .

.

When reintroduced this session, it narrowly passed 2nd reading on March 31 with 141 Yeas to 128 Nays. All six Con members of the Environment Committee voted against it.

.

Amusingly, in the debate in the House, Con Environmental Parliamentary Secretary and Environment Committee member Mark Warawa argued the bill was "probably unconstitutional" and they would prefer to have "a suite of eco-actions" instead. He also boasted that the Cons will give $1.5 billion in taxpayers money over five years to subsidize experiments by the fossil fuel industry in carbon capture and storage.

.

Two months till the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and the Cons are still banking on The Jetsons to save us.

.

Send the bastards a letter.

.

Just this one time I'll let you use the big crayons.

.

Blogging Bali and Baird's ballyhoo

Local eco-activist Tzeporah Berman blogs the Bali conference and spars with Minister Baird over a beer. Some quick quotes :

"Shall we hold off having democratic elections until China does as well?"

"Tomorrow we'll be doing a press conference and panel discussion on Canada's forests here at Bali. There is a lot of discussion here about tropical forests but few people know that Canada's forests store more carbon than any other terrestrial ecosystem or that our logging contributes as much greenhouse gas emissions as all the cars on the road."

"It turns out that there is one thing to admire about Baird. His chutzpa. With full recognition of how disgusted some of the most committed and informed people from around the world are at him, he waltzed into the non-governmental groups' reception and had a beer. Obviously I couldn't pass up the moment. After debating the issues with him for half an hour I can safely say that the chutzpa is all I found to admire and unfortunately that alone is not enough to make a great leader. We live in a time that calls for courageous and thoughtful leadership. Talking to Minister Baird tonight was a little like debating Bill O'Reilly. You have to be quick and he is clever but he doesn't listen for a second and he is more interested in scoring points than actually leading."

Continue reading at Berman's blog or The Tyee

Update : Stop the Climate-Wrecking at Bali Avaaz Petition:

"We call urgently for the US, Canada and Japan to stop blocking serious 2020 targets for emissions reductions, and for the rest of the world to refuse to accept anything less."

Your name here

62,823 signatures in 12 hours so far......Thank you, Holly Stick

Steve and Sandra count their blessings

PM rejects charge that Canada is 'isolated' in its viewpoint
The Ottawa Citizen :

"A defiant Stephen Harper has rejected Liberal accusations that he embarrassed Canada on the world stage in Commonwealth climate change talks, vowing to push all countries for binding restrictions to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
"I've seen reports that suggest Canada was isolated in this position. That's not remotely true," the prime minister said.

The only country that Mr. Harper named as a supporter was Trinidad and Tobago."

Win the Nobel and lose your funding

And as Scruffy Dan points out, the Canadian IPCC scientists are clearly pissed about it :
"Nobel Prize-winning scientists from Canada say the Harper government is failing to protect the country from the dangers of global warming because it has shut down a federal climate change research network and blocked new studies on the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere."

Andrew Weaver, UVic uses words like "vindictive" and "stupidity"
"Harper stands up and waffles on about trying to call for 50% emissions reductions. Where on earth is he getting those numbers from?" Weaver asked. "They're certainly not coming from Canadian scientists."

The government said that it closed the Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network because it had completed its federal mandate. The network and the independent Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science both sponsored peer-reviewed research that contributed to the award-winning IPCC report that is now being used by governments as a basis for international climate change negotiations.

It was in fact that very IPCC report which apparently caused Harper to adopt, um, a better appreciation of the dangers of AGW and climate change. I guess we know all we need to know about it now.

Environment Minister John Baird said suggestions that his department was cutting research spending were "totally unfounded," since the government was spending a "record amount" on climate research in various departments such as Natural Resources and Industry Canada.

Industry Canada? Please. According to their website, the Industry Canada mandate is : "a fair, efficient and competitive marketplace; an innovative economy; and competitive industry and sustainable communities."
I know - they also have sciencey links. I started to read the "Related links : Science and Technology" and got as far as "The Strategy is focused on creating a more competitive and sustainable Canadian economy with the help of science and technology" when I got distracted by "BizPals" on the sidebar. I get it, John, but I'm not exactly seeing Nobel here.

Back to Baird : "I can appreciate that some people would rather (have) more (spending) on this or on that, but it's a record amount and it's informed by some of the expert officials that we have in science in the public service," he said. "We don't need the politicization of science. That's for sure."

Damn straight, John. Can't have that.

CP : Audit slaps wrist of Natural Resources for lobbyist conflict-of-interest

Apparently Natural Resources Canada spent a cool million bucks last year buying its employees expensive memberships in groups that lobby the government. Conflict of Interest? The list of lobbyists isn't available but the CP story does provide us with this reminder :

"Natural Resources is primarily responsible for the $1.5-billion ecoEnergy program, announced in January by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to promote renewable energy."

As it turns out, promoting renewable energy is the precisely the business of the agri-biz astroturf group Canadian Renewable Fuels Association - you know, the guys who promote ethanol, the practice of feeding corn to cars to produce a 1% reduction in GHG. CRFA was headed by registered federal lobbyist Kory Teneycke up till Nov1 this year when he returned to the Harper fold as Director of the Conservative Resource Group. I say returned because prior to his stint as head of CRFA, Teneycke was a Reform Party activist and campaign strategist for Preston Manning.

Baird is right. We don't need politicization of science because we already have lots of it.

Dr. Gordon McBean, a review editor of the 2007 IPCC report and the volunteer chairperson of the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science : "Canada likes to think of itself as a G8 country, and we should act like one occasionally."

Why Canada has no mandatory GHG caps

From Environment Canada: Canada's 2005 GHG Inventory

GHG emissions 1990 to 2005 - Up 25%

Amount over Kyoto target - 32.7%

SUVs & Light duty trucks - Up 109%

Petroleum Industries - Up 56.4%

"Much of the increase in the Petroleum Industries sector is attributable to the rapid growth in crude oil and natural gas exports to the United States over the period.

Fugitive releases (e.g. methane leaks from pipelines) contributed just as significantly to GHG emissions - a growth of about 54 percent. Much of this increase is the result of higher crude oil and natural gas exports."

DeSmogBlog : 5 Reasons Canada is NOT a leader in reducing GHGs.