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Climate Summit of the Americas hits pause button on climate crisis

The end result of last week’s Climate Summit of the Americas was a Climate Action Statement that will enable the continued warming of the earth’s atmosphere.

The statement signed by 23 governments, including Ontario, Quebec and California, aims to meet a target 2-degrees Celsius warming limit in global mean temperature by “the second half of the century.”

Setting future climate targets, however, seems to be a way for governments to hit the snooze button on the issue. 

The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario recently warned that for Ontario to meet its previously set greehouse gas targets for 2020, it would need to find further reductions roughly equivalent to those achieved when the province shuttered its coal-fired electric plants. 

In his opening address at the summit held at the Royal York Hotel, Glen Murray, Ontario’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, boasted that the closure of coal in Ontario is equivalent in greenhouse gas emissions to taking 7 million cars off the road. 

Those emissions reductions would be undermined by the proposed TransCanada Energy East pipeline, which would transport 1.1 million litres of tar sands bitumen daily to Quebec.  The impact of the project could result in a 40 per cent expansion of the tar sands and put an annual 32 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, the equivalent of putting those 7 million cars back on the road and cancelling any reductions from shutting coal. 

Speaking at press conferences during the summit with California Governor Jerry Brown, both Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard indicated support for pipelines. 

“We have 1100 companies in Ontario that are dependent on Alberta’s oil industry” said Wynne.  “To pretend that we don’t have a shared interest and we don’t have to find a way to move that fuel in one way or another would be to hide our head in the sand.”

“Oil still has to move in this country, and if its not going to move by pipeline its going to move by train or by truck” said Couillard.  “I’d rather have a safer alternative (and) incorporate the costs of climate, this is why cap and trade is so useful.”

When pressed to consider shutting down the tar sands and stopping pipelines as a means of mitigating runaway climate change Wynne said “if we antagonize the very people we have to work with then we are not going to have success.” 

The International Energy Agency predicts a 3.5C degree increase by the year 2035 and the UN Environment Programme predicts up to a 5C degree increase by 2050. It is unknown if human beings can survive on a planet warmed by these temperatures above baseline. Continued greenhouse gas emissions will accelerate climate change.

Furthermore, experts say a 2-degree target itself may be inadequate to prevent abrupt runaway climate change.  Melting the polar ice cap, for example, means the earth will absorb more of the sun’s rays which would otherwise be reflected by the ice, this in turn could warm the ocean and thaw the permafrost and cause the quick release of methane which is a greenhouse gas 100 times more potent than carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.

“We may have past a tipping point, we can’t predict with any degree of certainty where we are now headed based on the carbon that is there” said California Governor Jerry Brown. “Human beings are hardwired for events, for a gunshot or a wild animal chasing us, dealing with a condition that slowly builds up, is much more difficult.” 

On the question of the possibility of near-human extinction, Wynne said: “When I look at my three grandchildren I think about what their lives are going to be like and whether they are going to live in a world where they are going to be able to see a future.”

At a meeting this week in Newfoundland, Canada’s premiers will develop a Canadian Energy Strategy, but according to Tim Gray, Executive Director of Environmental Defence, “the momentum on it is for cross-Canada premiers’ support for pipelines and to say nice words about renewables.”

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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