This is a guest post by Jens Wieting, forest and climate campaigner with the Sierra Club B.C.

If you live in British Columbia you might think that our province is a climate champion, because you heard it from our government. Last month, for example, the provincial government sent out a bold press release touting B.C. as a world leader in climate action. The release highlighted B.C.'s carbon tax and the accomplishment of "meeting our 2012 GHG reduction target."

However, just a few days later, the Canadian government released its latest greenhouse gas emissions data showing that B.C.'s emissions actually increased by 2.4 per cent in 2013 (to 63 million tons of greenhouse gases, from 61.5 in 2012). This is a big deal, because the threat of global warming has reached a point at which we cannot afford our annual emissions to continue to increase.

In March, the monthly global average concentration of carbon dioxide passed 400 parts per million. When the concentration of greenhouse gases was last this high, temperatures were several degrees warmer and sea level many metres higher.

If we want to curb rising temperatures and sea levels, we need immediate and far-reaching annual emission reductions, especially in industrialized nations like Canada. There is only one path to stabilizing the climate: annual emissions must decrease every year and they can never go up. This is the first step towards saving our climate — don't make our annual carbon pollution worse.

Fortunately, many countries around the world are now taking steps into the right direction and are reducing their annual emissions, from Europe to the U.S.

China managed to reduce coal consumption for the first time in 2014. Thanks to renewable energy success and other breakthroughs, global annual emissions remained stable in 2014, and didn't go up as usual.

Image courtesy of Visualcarbon.org

The B.C. government release announced that work on Climate Action Plan 2.0 is about to begin and that "the Province is challenging other jurisdictions to match or exceed the world-leading standard B.C. has set for climate action." It is great to hear that work on a new climate action plan has begun. But this plan needs to be grounded in an honest assessment of our success to date, not wishful thinking.

So what progress has our province made so far? Eight years ago, the province set a relatively ambitious target: to reduce B.C.'s emissions by 33 per cent of 2007 levels by 2020. Unfortunately, the new data shows we are way off track, with a reduction of only 2 per cent and only 5 years to go to our deadline.

In contrast, the European Union had reduced emissions by 19 per cent in 2013, compared to 1990 levels. By contrast, B.C.'s 2013 emissions were 13 per cent higher. Premier Christy Clark's claim that B.C. is still a "world leader in the fight against climate change" is highly misleading.

The 2013 emissions increase is a wake-up call and the province must take immediate action to reverse this trend. Among the many measures needed is phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and re-establishing the annual increases in the carbon tax rate.

But perhaps the most important step to make it possible for B.C. to get back on track is for the province to introduce a "climate test" for all energy infrastructure projects — a mandatory assessment of the full carbon footprint of new coal, oil or gas infrastructure projects.

For example, the B.C. government has not yet given up its goal to build at least three LNG terminals by 2020, which would lead to a massive ramp up of fracking in the province.

This would increase provincial emissions by more than 50 per cent, entirely incompatible with the idea of saving a livable climate. We must cease making these large, long-term capital investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure because they would lock in additional emissions for decades. This is crucial for getting out of the hole: Stop digging.

B.C. has a diverse economy with many opportunities to strengthen low-carbon sectors with a bright future like clean technologies, renewable energy, tourism, creative industries, forestry and agriculture. We must restore our forest's function as carbon banks by increasing forest conservation and improving forest management.

Our province can become a real climate leader through a full shift away from gas, oil and coal, to climate solutions that create more and better jobs. This would allow us to actually meet our reduction targets and aim for new ones.

B.C. should follow Premier Clark's suggestion to "meet or beat" the world-leading standard for climate action and adopt the same target that California and the European Union set their eyes on: a 40 per cent reduction of 1990 emissions levels by 2030.

In light of the failure of the Canadian government to take the threat of global warming seriously it is time for the provinces to step up to the plate and inspire hope on the road to the important climate summit in Paris at the end of the year.

Image Credit: Tina Lovgreen via BCIT

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This is a guest post by Sustainable Prosperity, a national green economy think tank.

This is a big week for Canadian energy and climate policy, with Monday’s Canadian Round Table on the Green Economy and Tuesday’s premiers’ climate summit. With all the talk of a “green economy,” we’re releasing a new video explaining what that ubiquitous term really means.  

What better time than now to bust a few myths about the “what” and the “how” of a greener Canadian economy?

Myth #1: A greener Canadian economy only exists in fairy tales.  

Many people view a green economy as something a long way out that will be difficult to achieve. But the good news is that the green economy is already here in many respects. It’s in the new ways to create energy, water, food and many of the other basic necessities. It’s also reflected in programs like British Columbia’s carbon tax and Quebec’s cap-and-trade system for emissions reductions. We already know how to green our economy. We just need to do more of it.

Myth #2: Greening the economy is incompatible with prosperity

Sustainable Prosperity’s vision of a greener economy is compatible with a strong economic future for Canada, including increased productivity, employment and innovation. Leading economic voices are pointing to the tremendous economic opportunities that await those economies that figure out how to “green while we grow.”

The global consultancy McKinsey, for example, believes that by 2020 there will be a global market in excess of US$ 2 trillion for technologies and services that deliver sustainability solutions. The recent United Nations report on the “new climate economy” identified trade in US$2.2 trillion low-carbon and energy-efficient opportunities alone.  Some countries are already taking advantage of such opportunities. Germany, for example, has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 22 per cent during the past 20 years while doubling its economic output.

Myth #3: Greening the economy is just about windmills and organic food.

The view that a green economy is made up of things that are unambiguously “green” – like windmills or organic food – is pretty widespread. But if we are going to green our economy – that is make it truly sustainable in the long-term – we will need to focus on the whole of the economy. In a greener Canadian economy, every sector is improving its environmental performance.

We are not going to stop trading our resources, nor is the world going to stop needing them. But there is a great deal we can do to make our economy as a whole – resource sectors included – greener. The benefits of that will not only come in the form of greater efficiency and a smaller environmental footprint, but also in the development of sustainability solutions that will find their own markets.

Ultimately, every part our economy and society stands to benefit from a focus on “greening while we grow.”

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How to finance a global shift away from toxic greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels was one of the key talking points during the first week of the annual United Nations climate change conference held this year in Lima, Peru.

The conference, which began Monday and is scheduled to end next Friday, started with a statement by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), who said negotiators must draft a new, universal climate change agreement that will hopefully be endorsed next year at COP21 in Paris.

Figueres also said negotiators “must enhance the delivery of finance, in particular to the most vulnerable” as well as stimulating “ever-increasing action on the part of all stakeholders to scale up the scope and accelerate the solutions that move us all forward, faster.”

In terms of finance, the UNFCCC published a media release saying the amount of money earmarked for climate change action globally was at least $340 billion for the period 2011-2012, but possibly $650 billion or higher.

Support from developed countries to developing countries amounted to between $35 and $50 billion annually, the media release said, adding dedicated multilateral climate funds are set to rise with the recent pledges to the Green Climate Fund
 amounting to nearly $10 billion.

According to Bloomberg, however, Figueres said at a press conference that much more money needs to be raised to effectively fight climate change.

“Although these numbers are encouraging and give us a sense of hope, the fact is that climate finance needs to be in the trillions if we’re going to get to where we need to be,” she said.

Figueres added finance will be a crucial key for achieving the internationally-agreed goal of keeping a global temperature rise under 2 degrees C and sparing people and the planet from dangerous climate change.

Another major talking point at the conference was the release of a statement by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) saying that 2014 is on track to be one of the hottest, if not the hottest, years on record.

An accompanying WMO media release said the record high temperatures are largely due to record high global sea surface temperatures, which will very likely remain above normal until the end of the year.

January to October 2014 average air temperatures. Source: WMO Report

Those high sea temperatures, the WMO said, and other factors contributed to exceptionally heavy rainfall and floods in many countries and extreme drought in others.

“The provisional information for 2014 means that fourteen of the fifteen warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

“What we saw in 2014 is consistent with what we expect from a changing climate. Record-breaking heat combined with torrential rainfall and floods destroyed livelihoods and ruined lives. What is particularly unusual and alarming this year are the high temperatures of vast areas of the ocean surface, including in the northern hemisphere,” Jarraud said.

“Record-high greenhouse gas emissions and associated atmospheric concentrations are committing the planet to a much more uncertain and inhospitable future.”

Other developments related to the climate change issue continued to occur outside of the negotiations in Lima.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told CBC that Canada needs to become “ambitious and visionary” and quit stalling on setting climate change goals.

"It’s only natural that Canada as one of the G7 countries should take a leadership role,” Ban said.

“There are ways to make a transformative change from a fossil fuel-based economy to a climate-resilient economy by investing wisely in renewable energy choices.”

Earlier in the week efforts in Canada to harness the power of renewables became a prominent news story, as reported by DeSmog Canada, showing that clean energy provided more jobs in the nation last year than the oilsands.

Canada’s rapidly developing green energy industry has seen investments of more than $24 billion in the past five years while employment in the sector increased by 37 per cent during the same period, according to the report by Clean Energy Canada.

The 34-page Tracking the Energy Revolution — Canada report noted that there were 23,700 total direct jobs in the green energy sector in 2013, compared to 22,340 jobs in the oilsands.

Germany’s largest energy company, E.ON, on the first day of the Lima conference, created global headlines with an announcement that it was splitting the company into two with the largest share of employees, about 40,000, getting out of the coal and gas business and focusing entirely on renewables.

“We have seen the emergence of a new energy world,” Chief Executive Johannes Teyssen said. “E.ON’s existing broad business model can no longer properly address these new challenges.”

In the U.S., 223 companies announced their support for the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed carbon standard for electric power plants, including industry giants such as IKEA, Mars Inc., VF Corporation, and Nestlé.

“As businesses concerned about the immediate and long-term implications of climate change, we strongly support the principles behind the draft Carbon Pollution Standard for existing power plants,” states the letter, which was sent to the EPA, the Obama Administration, and Senate and House majority and minority leaders.

“The proposed Carbon Pollution Standard represents a critical step in moving our country towards a clean energy economy,” said the letter.

Also spurring headlines was the release of a Munich Re poll that showed 83 per cent of Americans now believe the climate is changing, and 63 per cent are concerned about changes in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes.

“Our survey findings indicate that national sentiment over whether or not climatic changes are occurring has finally reached a tipping point,” said Tony Kuczinski, President and CEO of Munich Re America.

The Associated Press also contributed to the pressing global conversation on climate change, saying that in the more than two decades since world leaders first got together to try to solve global warming, life on Earth has changed, not just the climate.

“It’s gotten hotter, more polluted with heat-trapping gases, more crowded and just downright wilder,” the AP reported.

“The numbers are stark. Carbon dioxide emissions: up 60 per cent. Global temperature: up six-tenths of a degree. Population: up 1.7 billion people. Sea level: up 3 inches. U.S. extreme weather: up 30 per cent. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica: down 4.9 trillion tons of ice.”

Negotiators in Lima will no doubt be discussing these developments, and more, next week as they work towards — as they have said repeatedly in the past — an ambitious legally-binding greenhouse gas emissions agreement next year in Paris.

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An alarming new study published Tuesday by the National Audubon Society says that almost half the bird species in the continental United States and Canada are already threatened by climate change.

The study — Audubon’s Birds and Climate Change Report — finds that 126 species will lose more than 50 per cent of their current ranges by mid-century with no possibility of relocating if global warming continues at its current pace.

“A further 188 species face more than 50 per cent range loss by 2080 but may be able to make up some of this loss if they are able to colonize new areas,” an accompanying media release says. “These 314 species include many not previously considered at risk. The report indicates that numerous extinctions are likely if global temperature increases are not stopped.”

“It’s a punch in the gut. The greatest threat our birds face today is global warming,” Audubon Chief Scientist Gary Langham, who led the investigation, said in the media release.

“That’s our unequivocal conclusion after seven years of painstakingly careful and thorough research. Global warming threatens the basic fabric of life on which birds — and the rest of us — depend, and we have to act quickly and decisively if we are going to avoid catastrophe for them and for us.”

Audubon President and CEO David Yarnold described the potential loss as staggeringly horrific.

“This report is a roadmap, and it’s telling us two big things: We have to preserve and protect the places birds live, and we have to work together to reduce the severity of global warming,” Yarnold said.

The report, which studied 588 bird species, says a number of iconic birds in the continental United States and Canada — including the Bald Eagle, the Common Loon and Baltimore Oriole — are under increasing threat.

Protecting birds, the non-profit conservation organization’s report added, will require both redoubling conservation efforts to safeguard critical habitat and curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Coincidentally, the Audubon study was published the same day as a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report found that the level of atmospheric greenhouse gases reached a new record high in 2013.

The Geneva-based WMO’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin said the 2013 levels were fuelled by a surge in levels of carbon dioxide, a finding that may make politicians and national governments work harder and more cooperatively to fight climate change.  

According to a related WMO media release, the report showed that between 1990 and 2013 there was a 34 per cent increase in radiative forcing — the warming effect on our climate — because of long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide.

“In 2013, concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 142 per cent of the pre-industrial era (1750), and of methane and nitrous oxide 253 per cent and 121 per cent respectively,” the release said.

WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said there is no doubt our climate is changing and our weather is becoming more extreme due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.

“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin shows that, far from falling, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually increased last year at the fastest rate for nearly 30 years. We must reverse this trend by cutting emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases across the board,” Jarraud said. “We are running out of time.”

Noting that carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years and in the ocean for even longer, he said the report provides scientific data politicians can use to make decisions related to climate change.

“We have the knowledge and we have the tools for action to try to keep temperature increases within 2°C to give our planet a chance and to give our children and grandchildren a future,” Jarraud said.

“Pleading ignorance can no longer be an excuse for not acting.”

Image Credit: Tambako The Jaguar via Flickr.

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A 2012 government report from scientists at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans warns that Canada’s Atlantic waters are “particularly vulnerable” to ocean acidification from rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Mike De Souza writes for Postmedia News, that “the government report, posted on a website without a formal announcement or news release, noted that the world’s oceans have absorbed a significant amount of carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, with profound effects on marine ecosystems that could damage the Canadian economy.”

The October report, co-authored by Kristian Curran and Kumiko Azetsu-Scott from the department, focuses on what global ocean acidification “may mean for the marine ecology of the Scotian Shelf region of Atlantic Canada.” The Scotian Shelf is in the North Atlantic, which is “a global 'hotspot' for the absorption of carbon dioxide into the surface ocean.”

Unsurprisingly, Curran and Azetsu-Scott’s forecast isn’t too bright. The study notes that the present “concern regarding ocean acidification resides in its unprecedented rate of occurrence, due to the significant amount of carbon dioxide that has been added to the atmosphere over the past 250 years.”

De Souza notes that, according to the report, “marine ecosystems might be able to adapt to changes in their acidity over time periods greater than 10,000 years, but would have difficulty with emerging changes that are equivalent to a 30 per cent increase in acidity since the industrial revolution.”

The report says that further global increase in ocean acidity is “certain to occur over the coming century and longer due to present day atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, even with legislative or policy-driven reductions in carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere.”

Because ocean acidification and “its associated impacts cannot be easily reversed, adaptive measures coupled with a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere will have to be pursued to protect ecosystems and human livelihoods against this phenomenon.”  

Curran and Azetsu-Scott mention that more studies on the effects of ocean acidification on marine life are urgently needed, saying it is uncertain at this point what lasting alterations will be seen in the ecosystem. They emphasize, though, that “any potential impacts could be severe,” and that acidification is likely to be “enough of a driver to alter species composition and dominance in a manner that could profoundly alter marine ecosystem and functioning.”

As De Souza observes, the report also addresses possible socio-economic impacts of changes to the ecosystem of the Scotian Shelf. Shellfish industries in Atlantic Canada “worth hundreds of millions of dollars and responsible for thousands of jobs” could be adversely affected, since the animals they harvest could be “negatively affected” by rising acidity levels.

In a summary, the report states that the “current situation” concerning “use of fossil fuels” and “legislated targets for carbon dioxide emission reductions” in Canada is “poor” when assessed “in terms of implications for the state of the environment.”

“To adapt to the changing environment we have to identify where the most vulnerable area is and try to reduce that added stress like pollution (and/or) overfishing,” Azetsu-Scott told Postmedia News in her first major interview about the report since October 2012.

“But still a lot of work needs to be done for adaptation,” she added, calling ocean acidification and climate change an “urgent and serious problem” for Canada.

De Souza writes that Luke Gaulton, a spokesman for Fisheries and Oceans, confirmed the Canadian government “didn’t issue a news release when it published the report.”

It was instead posted on “the website of a network with representation from government, industry, academia and non-governmental organizations.”

Image Credit: Ocean Acidification: State of the Scotian Shelf Report

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On Friday, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California, San Diego, recorded CO2 levels higher than the world has seen in over 800,000 years.

From atop the Mauna Loa volcano on the big island of Hawaii—the oldest continuous carbon dioxide measurement station in the world—a reading of just over 400 parts per million (ppm) was recorded this Friday. A similar measurement was made at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) station, also in Hawaii. This reading pushes us well past the 350 ppm target scientists say we should stay below if a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius is to be avoided.

This interactive infographic, originally published on The Guardian, gives a more detailed account of just what 400ppm looks like and how these measurements compare to our historic average:

Dr. Charles David Keeling of Scripps began measuring emissions in 1958.

A constant record of CO2 levels has been kept since Keeling developed the now standard ‘Keeling Curve.' It is the most accurate method of measuring carbon dioxide in the air to date and there are several global stations using it to keep an eye on rising emissions. The earliest measurements recorded 310 ppm in the late 1950’s and the global average before the 19th century's Industrial Revolution was 280 ppm.

According to James Butler of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, a CO2 reading of 400 ppm “[is] mainly important as a milestone that marks a steady progress of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Marking such progress has been crucial in understanding the global rise of CO2 concentrations and demonstrating the need for improved environmental practices on an international level.

By studying the bubbles trapped in glacier ice, scientists have deduced that the atmosphere hasn’t had this much carbon dioxide in it for 800,000 to 5 million years.

The numbers will dip somewhat when the Northern Hemisphere reaches the height of summer and the leafy forests drink up some of the CO2 in the air. However, according to NOAA, once emitted, the extra “CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans remains for thousands of years.”

This news has hit many scientists hard. Maureen E. Raymo from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University told the New York Times, “It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster.”

Dr. Keeling’s son, Ralph Keeling took over the research at Scripps after his father’s death in 2005. He fears that the levels could reach 450 ppm in the next 25 years if nothing is done to reduce emissions.

Many major contributors to global carbon emissions – like the United States, China and Canada – have no binding national targets and no immediate plans to make them. Without clear guidelines in place, limiting the warming and extreme weather events associated with increased carbon in the atmosphere will be difficult, and likely expensive.

“There’s no stopping the CO2 from reaching 400 ppm,” Ralph Keeling says. “That’s now a done deal. But what happens from here on still matters to climate, and it’s still under our control. It mainly comes down to how much we rely on fossil fuels for energy.”

Infographic Credit:@theduncanclark / The Guardian / Kiln

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