Canada can't get it up for climate change

Here's a little digest of recent news about Canada's embarrassingly flaccid stance on protecting the environment:

Days numbered for polar bears, study says
Mike de Souza
Canwest News Service

"The federal government and territorial governments of Canada are all failing to protect polar bears from the threat of extinction, a new study charges.

The report, produced by the David Suzuki Foundation, concluded yesterday only two of seven Canadian provinces and territories (Newfoundland and Labrador and Ontario) recognize the species may be at risk.

Despite repeated warnings from government scientists and independent studies about the polar bear's vulnerabilities, only Newfoundland and Labrador has a plan to protect them.

'This report finds that Canada's response to the crisis has been inadequate,' reads the report, written by Rachel Plotkin, a biodiversity analyst at the foundation. ' In short, Canada has no plan. This country minimally protects the habitat of polar bears and offers few restrictions to curb toxic chemicals that harm the polar bear. Most importantly, Canada also lacks an effective policy to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.'

An independent government advisory body, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, has concluded three times - in 1991, 1999 and 2002 - that the polar bear is a species of 'special concern'.

Canada's plan deemed 'anemic'
Montreal Gazette, p. A4 (Nov.17/07)

...The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has concluded there is clear evidence the climate system has been fundamentally altered by greenhouse gas emissions, generated largely through the burning of fossil fuels. It says the resulting planetary meltdown threatens everything from the boreal forests to coral reefs.

"We need huge cuts in emissions," said Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria and IPCC co-author.

His work indicates emissions will have to be slashed by 90 per cent by 2050 to avid a 2C rise in the global temperature - a threshold scientists fear could trigger melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

Weaver wants Ottawa to spell out the rationale for its emission reduction targets and said the Harper government appears to be "pulling numbers out of the air".

Harper has chosen to be part of the problem on climate control
Janet Bagnall
Montreal Gazette (Nov. 28/07)

When the 52 Commonwealth countries met in Kampala last week, a key goal was to hammer out binding targets for greenhouse-gas emission reductions. With the world facing, according to the United nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "abrupt and irreversible" damage unless emissions are curbed immediately, the Commonwealth initiative should have had at least the support of the developed countries among its members. Like Canada.

Instead, leading the charge against the initiative was none other than Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He argued binding objectives should be binding on all emitters - or none. Anything else was "a recipe for failing on the issue of climate change," he assured an increasingly unreceptive audience.

Bizarrely, Harper is growing more obdurate even as the rest of the world comes round to recognizing how desperate the situation is. At the Commonwealth meeting, Britain argued developed countries should be taking the lead in greenhouse-gas reduction. With the developed world showing the way, Britain said, big emitters such as India and China would follow suit.

Harper continued to insist, however, that as holder of the only "right" position, he intends to push for binding reduction goals on all emitters at the UN international climate-change talks in Bali on Dec. 3 - 14.