Last year the Canadian government enjoyed a positive reception at the UN climate talks in Paris. After 10 years of climate inaction under a Conservative government, the international community anticipated the new Liberal government would mean good things for the nation’s climate governance.

But Canada’s contribution to the world’s first climate treaty remains “inadequate” according to a new report released by the Carbon Action Tracker in light of the climate talks.

The Paris Agreement, designed to limit global warming to as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible, was signed in France last year and ratified, with incredible speed, less than one year later on November 4. Although a proud signatory of the agreement, Canada will not meet its climate targets, according to the new analysis.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau adopted the same climate targets as the previous Stephen Harper government, pledging to reduce Canada’s emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

“Under its current policies, Canada will miss both its 2020 pledge and its 2030 [Nationally Determined Contribution] targets by a wide margin,” Climate Action Tracker states.

The group estimates that based on current climate policies Canada’s emissions will increase by three to 18 per cent by 2030.

Last month Trudeau announced a national carbon tax that will price carbon at $10/tonne in 2018 and increase to $50/tonne by 2022.

But according to the analysis of four prominent environmental groups, Canada’s fossil fuel subsidies eliminate the supposed benefits of that carbon tax.

Canada Must Phase Out $3.3 Billion In Fossil Fuel Subsidies

“It makes no sense to put a price on carbon while continuing to give handouts to oil and gas companies,” Alex Doukas, senior campaigner and author with Oil Change International, told DeSmog Canada. 

“That's like pouring water on the fire with one hand while spraying gasoline on it with the other.” 

Doukas added Trudeau promised to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies when campaigning last year.

“Now his government has to deliver.”

Canada first committed to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies in 2009 along with other G20 nations. That commitment was later affirmed at a 2015 G7 meeting and named as a priority for Finance Minister Bill Morneau in a mandate letter from Trudeau.

“Unless Canada phases out massive subsidies to oil and gas companies, Trudeau’s carbon price will do little to encourage polluters to cut carbon emissions,” Dale Marshall, national program manager with Environmental Defence, said in Marrakech.

“The three billion dollars in annual subsidies could be put to much better use by investing in climate action, health care and other initiatives.”

In Marrakech, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna participated in the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, an international group pushing for more integrated market-based climate solutions.

“In light of Minister McKenna’s participation…we take the opportunity to remind Canada that leadership requires coherent fiscal policies,” Annie Bérubé, Director of Government Relations at Équiterre, said.

“Finance Minister Bill Morneau must announce a predictable phase-out of all remaining preferential tax treatment to the oil and gas sector starting in Budget 2017.”

Canada’s #ClimateAction Called ‘Inadequate’ at UN Climate Talks in #Marrakech https://t.co/KpTN378mXJ #cdnpoli @cathmckenna @JustinTrudeau

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 15, 2016

More Opportunity for Canadian Leadership at UN Climate Talks

She added there is some work to be done, however, to bridge the gap between Canada’s international climate commitments and decision-making domestically.

“This is a core question that Canada has to reconcile,” she said.

“Can we build a national climate plan that allows us to achieve the 2030 target with deeper reductions over time?”

Canada has come under harsh criticism recently for approving the Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal on the coast of B.C.  The LNG facility is estimated to be the largest single point source of emissions in Canada, adding the equivalent of 1.9 million cars to the roads.

Analysts have pointed out the approval of the LNG project is a serious obstacle to Canada meeting its climate commitments.

Flanagan said she sees an opportunity for Canada to really “do the math” on its climate targets.

“That’s really what this COP is about,” she said. “It’s about taking the rhetoric and turning it into plans that will drive the change we need to see.”

Image: COP22 signage in Marrakech, Morocco. Photo: Carol Linnitt/DeSmog Canada

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Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has repeatedly argued that putting a price on carbon would be bad for the economy — but experts say Wall’s own climate change strategy will end up costing the province more per tonne than the federal government’s plan, while failing to be nearly as fair or effective as a carbon tax.   

Much of Saskatchewan’s climate strategy centres around the SaskPower Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, which cost $1.5 billion to build (funded mostly by SaskPower ratepayers and a $240 million investment from the federal government).

“When we think about how we can reduce emissions most cost-effectively, [Boundary Dam] probably stands out as an example of how not to do it,” says Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at Clean Energy Canada.

Choosing a preferential technology and using public dollars to subsidize it is “quite inconsistent with the approach that most conservative politicians and economists would take,” Woynillowicz added.

Indeed, even as oil companies and conservative politicians — such as Preston Manning, Jean Charest and Jim Dinning — have spoken in favour of putting a price on carbon, Wall has worked hard to establish himself as the major voice of opposition to a federal carbon tax.

Enter Saskatchewan’s 53-page “Climate Change White Paper,” released on October 18. Carbon nerds eagerly jumped into the paper head first, anxious to learn how Canada’s highest greenhouse gas emitter per capita planned to help Canada meet its climate commitments.  

Disappointingly, the paper essentially packaged up the policy actions Saskatchewan has already taken to date.

Off the Wall: #Saskatchewan @PremierBradWall's Bizarre, Contradictory #ClimatePlan https://t.co/sWJXdJzEFd #cdnpoli #skpoli #carbontax

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 25, 2016

Carbon Capture and Storage Far More Expensive Than Carbon Tax

The Boundary Dam CCS project is intended to reduce emissions from SaskPower’s largest coal-fired power plant by capturing smokestack emissions (in the range of one million tonnes of carbon per year).

However, because one-third of those captured emissions will be sold for use in oil extraction at Cenovus’ Weyburn site, the current estimate is that Boundary Dam will remove more like 600,000 tonnes per year from the atmosphere — if it can even manage that.

With that level of emissions recovery, the cost of CCS works out to about $100 or $110 per tonne, according to Trevor Tombe, assistant professor of economics at the University of Calgary.

Only four days prior to the release of Saskatchewan's plan, on the same day as Wall argued in the Globe and Mail that “carbon-capture technology works,” a report in Science concluded that negative-emission technologies such as carbon capture storage are an “unjust and high-stakes gamble” that “should not form the basis of the mitigation agenda.”

One of the reasons carbon pricing has attracted support from across the political spectrum is because it doesn’t pick winners and losers. It puts a price on pollution and then lets the market determine the best ways to reduce carbon emissions. The bizarre thing is that Saskatchewan’s gamble on CCS is the exact opposite of that.

Woynillowicz adds there’s little evidence that SaskPower has developed any plans for monetizing their experience and technology to sell it to other jurisdictions, or securing investments from the federal government for future projects.

The One New Thing In Saskatchewan’s Climate White Paper

The only major new announcement in those riveting 53 pages was the call to redeploy $2.65 billion in foreign aid to technology subsidies within Canada.

Tombe says that recommendation mixes two separate conversations —there’s no need to tie a case for additional government investment in research with foreign aid funding.

Experts Suggest Carbon Tax Required to Spark Investments in Renewables

A more consistent approach would be the establishment of a broad-based carbon price.

Such a mechanism — which will take the form of either a $50/tonne carbon tax or cap-and-trade system by 2022 due to the recent federal decision — would address the “market failure” of unpriced pollution, something that Tombe pointed out isn’t solved by providing subsidies for R&D.

It would also incentivize investments in renewable power sources, energy efficiency measures and perhaps even carbon capture and storage (although given the current price tag of the technology — between $75 and $100/tonne just for the “capture” part of it — such a carbon price would have to be significantly higher than currently proposed to justify it).

Yet Wall completely rules out the role of taxation: he argues British Columbia’s emissions are rising despite having a carbon tax, even though many acknowledge emissions are rising precisely because Premier Christy Clark has put a freeze on the tax, preventing its increase from $30/tonne since 2012.

In the White Paper, Wall strangely suggested that “we should be focusing our efforts on innovation and adaptation” and that “a carbon tax will harm Saskatchewan.”

But Woynillowicz says suggested innovations like “new crop varieties that are better able to withstand climate change and that effectively fix GHGs to the soil” would be incentivized in part via a price on carbon.

“You need either dollars to do that if it’s going to be the government making those strategic investments in R&D, or you need to send a price signal that creates the incentive for private sector actors to invest in R&D,” Woynillowicz says.

“You can do that through a price on carbon pollution.”

Climate Plan Quietly Recommits to Carbon Tax on Large Emitters Despite Premier’s Apparent Opposition

Even odder is the fact that Saskatchewan’s White Paper includes a commitment to “[move] ahead with plans for a fund supported by a levy on large emitters, with the fund’s expenditures limited to new technologies and innovation to reduce GHGs and not for general revenue” when the resource economy rebounds.

Tombe says that whether or not Wall likes to admit it, the notion of a “levy on large emitters” is indeed a tax, similar to what Alberta implemented with the Specified Gas Emitters Regulation (SGER) in 2007.

“Roughly speaking, that places that Saskatchewan carbon tax on about 50 per cent of what could be subject to a carbon tax,” he says. “It’s roughly the equivalent of half the coverage of Alberta and B.C.”

Carbon pricing can be designed in many different ways; Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan offers up a recent example of how to insulate low-income residents and “energy-intensive, trade-exposed” sectors from the economically damaging byproducts of a tax.

“That’s more what I’m disappointed with: that [Wall] sets up straw men and then knocks them down on the carbon tax front,” Tombe says.

“It’s fine: if he wants to have more costly action through the CCS or through the large-emitter levy and leave a lot of low-hanging fruit unpicked, that’s something that will be up to the Saskatchewan people to decide.”

Saskatchewan Has ‘Excellent Renewable Resources’  

Woynillowicz says the one bright spot of the White Paper was the re-commitment to double SaskPower’s generation capacity of renewables by 2030, although that announcement was already made in November 2015.

However, he emphasizes it’s a pledge for 50 per cent generation capacity, not actual generation, meaning it’s more in line with Alberta’s target of 30 per cent renewable generation by 2030 (for contrast, Iowa generated 31 per cent of its electricity from wind power in 2015).

Saskatchewan has “really excellent renewable resources,” Woynillowicz says.

As part of its plan, SaskPower intends to develop 1,600 megawatts of power between 2019 and 2030. But as mentioned, such a transition would be greatly accelerated by a commitment to a broad-based carbon price.

“Really, I’m just left scratching my head, wondering why Premier Wall has made this decision to oppose [carbon pricing] so vocally and aggressively,” Woynillowicz concludes.

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By Aimée Slangen, Utrecht University and John Church, CSIRO

Global average sea level has risen by about 17 cm between 1900 and 2005. This is a much faster rate than in the previous 3,000 years.

The sea level changes for several reasons, including rising temperatures as fossil fuel burning increases the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In a warming climate, the seas are expected to rise at faster rates, increasing the risk of flooding along our coasts. But until now we didn’t know what fraction of the rise was the result of human activities.

In research published in Nature Climate Change, we show for the first time that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible for the majority of sea level rise since the late 20th century.

As the amount of greenhouse gases we are putting into the atmosphere continues to increase, we need to understand how sea level responds. This knowledge can be used to help predict future sea level changes.

Image credit: CSIRO

Measuring sea level

Nowadays, we can measure the sea surface height using satellites, so we have an accurate idea of how the sea level is changing, both regionally and in the global mean.

Prior to this (before 1993), sea level was measured by tide gauges, which are spread unevenly across the world. As a result, we have a poorer knowledge of how sea level has changed in the past, particularly before 1960 when there were fewer gauges.

Nevertheless, the tide gauge measurements indicate that global mean sea level has increased by about 17 cm between 1900 and 2005.

What drives sea level rise?

The two largest contributors to rising seas are the expansion of the oceans as temperatures rise, loss of mass from glaciers and ice sheets, and other sources of water on land. Although we now know what the most important contributions to sea-level rise are, we did not know what is driving these changes.

Changes in sea level are driven by natural factors such as natural climate variability (for example El Niño), ongoing response to past climate change (regional warming after the Little Ice Age), volcanic eruptions, and changes in the sun’s activity.

Volcanic eruptions and changes in the sun affect sea level across years to decades. Large volcanic eruptions can cause a temporary sea-level fall because the volcanic ash reduces the amount of solar radiation reaching the ocean, thus cooling the ocean.

Humans have also contributed to sea level rise by burning fossil fuels and increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Separating the causes

We used climate models to estimate ocean expansion and loss of mass from glaciers and ice sheets for each of the individual factors responsible for sea level change (human and natural). To this we added best estimates of all other known contributions to sea level change, such as groundwater extraction and additional ice sheet contributions.

We then compared these model results to the observed global mean 20th century sea-level change to figure out which factor was responsible for a particular amount of sea level change.

Over the 20th century as a whole, the impact of natural influences is small and explains very little of the observed sea-level trend.

The delayed response of the glaciers and ice sheets to the warmer temperatures after the Little Ice Age (1300-1870 AD) caused a sea-level rise in the early 20th century. This explains much of the observed sea-level change before 1950 (almost 70%), but very little after 1970 (less than 10%).

The human factor

The largest contributions to sea-level rise after 1970 are from ocean thermal expansion and the loss of mass from glaciers in response to the warming from increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. This rise is partly offset by the impact of aerosols, which on their own would cause a cooling of the ocean and less melting of glaciers.

The combined influence of these two factors (greenhouse gases and aerosols) is small in the beginning of the century, explaining only about 15% of the observed rise. However, after 1970, we find that the majority of the observed sea-level rise is a direct response to human influence (nearly 70%), with a slightly increasing percentage up to the present day.

When all factors are considered, the models explain about three quarters of the observed rise since 1900 and almost all of the rise over recent decades (almost 90% since 1970).

The reason for this difference can be found either in the models or in the observations. The models could underestimate the observed rise before 1970 due to, for instance, an underestimated ice sheet contribution. However, the quality and number of sea level observations before the satellite altimeter record is also less.

Tipping the scales

Our paper shows that the driving factors of sea-level change have shifted over the course of the 20th century.

Past natural variations in climate were the dominant factor at the start of the century, as a result of glaciers and ice sheets taking decades to centuries to adapt to climate change.

In contrast, by the end of the 20th century, human influence has become the dominant driving factor for sea-level rise. This will probably continue until greenhouse gas emissions are reduced and ocean temperatures, glaciers and ice sheets are in equilibrium with climate again.

Aimée Slangen, Postdoctoral research fellow, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University and John Church, CSIRO Fellow, CSIRO

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Main image: A glacier at South Georgia Island. Credit: Flickr/DavidStanley

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Alberta Oil Magazine just published its National Survey on Energy Literacy, the culmination of 1,396 online interviews of a representative sample of Canadians conducted by Leger.

The results are particularly interesting coming from Alberta Oil, a magazine destined for the desks of the energy sector’s senior executives and decision-makers.

Summing up the survey’s findings about “The Issues,” Alberta Oil editors write that opposition to energy projects is “not just for West Coast hippies anymore.”

Indeed. There are quite a few nuggets in the survey’s findings that are probably causing a headache or two in Calgary’s corner offices this week. We round up the Top 5.

1) Opposition to the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline is just as serious as opposition to Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline — if not more so, according to the survey. What’s more, the more highly educated citizens are, the less likely they are to support Trans Mountain or Northern Gateway. Hmph, maybe the anti-pipeline crowd isn’t all unemployed hippies after all?

2) Fewer than one-in-ten post-secondary graduates find oil and gas industry associations credible and trustworthy when it comes to carbon emissions. That shouldn’t come as a huge surprise given that industry associations like the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers have fought new greenhouse gas regulations and successfully lobbied to weaken Canada’s environmental laws.

3) Young people aren’t super stoked on the future of the energy industry. Just 16.5 per cent of people 18-34 described it as “essential,” compared to 30.3 per cent overall. What’s more, only 9.3 per cent of respondents aged 18-34 described the oilsands as “essential” compared to 18 per cent for the broader population.

4) While British Columbia has thus far been the focal point of Canada’s pipeline debate, the strongest opposition to the oil and gas sector is actually in Quebec. That’s going to have big ramifications for the proposed Energy East pipeline that would theoretically transport bitumen across that province. When asked to think of the oil and gas sector in Canada and select words that come to mind, 51 per cent of Quebecers came up with “environmental disaster.” Time for Trans Canada's PR people to pop an Advil. (Since Edelman isn't doing their dirty work for them any more …)

Screencap of Alberta Oil Magazine's National Survey on Energy Literacy.

5) The editors at Alberta Oil do some hand-wringing about Canadians' lack of “energy literacy” … although energy literacy in this case appears to be defined as the ability to answer some pretty obscure pro-industry questions.

Take the multiple choice question on how much more carbon intensive the oil produced from Alberta’s oilsands is than the average grade of U.S. crude on a well-to-wheels basis. Only 5.6 per cent of respondents chose correctly.

Ummm hold on, hasn’t there been a raging debate going on for the past few years on oilsands’ emissions intensity?

While Alberta Oil would like you to think the “correct” answer to that question is six per cent, a comparison of oilsands emissions intensities (well-to-wheels) from seven data sources to the 2005 U.S. baseline showed that oilsands emissions range from eight to 37 per cent higher than the baseline. Really, the best answer would probably be that there's a huge amount of variation and disagreement on oilsands emissions intensity.

In good news, very few Canadians can spew out the precise answers industry wants to hear to their technical questions. Oil execs probably aren’t loving that their multi-million dollar advertising campaigns appear to be falling on deaf ears.

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Rich G20 nations are spending about $88 billion (USD) each year to find new coal, oil and gas reserves even though most reserves can never be developed if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change, according to a new report.

Generous government subsidies are actually propping up fossil fuel exploration which would otherwise be deemed uneconomic, states the report, “The fossil fuel bail-out: G20 subsidies for oil, gas and coal exploration.”

Produced by the London-based Overseas Development Institute and the Washington-based Oil Change International the 73-page analysis also noted the costs of renewables is falling and the investment returns are better than fossil fuels.  

“Every U.S. dollar in renewable energy subsidies attracts $2.5 in investment, whilst a dollar in fossil fuels subsidies only draws $1.3 of investment,” said the report released Tuesday, just days ahead of the G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane, Australia.

The report also notes the G20 nations are creating a ‘triple-lose’ scenario by providing subsidies for fossil-fuel exploration.

“They are directing large volumes of finance into high-carbon assets that cannot be exploited without catastrophic climate effects,” the report said. “They are diverting investment from economic low-carbon alternatives such as solar, wind and hydro-power. And they are undermining the prospects for an ambitious climate deal in 2015.”

Noting that leaders of the G20 countries, which produce about 80 per cent of global carbon emissions, pledged in 2009 to phase out ‘inefficient’ fossil-fuel subsidies, the report says there is a large gap between G20 commitment and action.

So who is paying for this exploration?

According to the report $49 billion of these subsidies occurred through state-owned enterprises, $23 billion from national subsidies delivered through direct spending and tax breaks and $16 billion from public finance from banks and financial institutions.

During the same period, the report said, the top 20 private oil and gas companies, globally, invested just $37 billion in exploration – less than half of what is provided annually by G20 governments – suggesting their exploration activities are highly dependent on public finance.  

The report added global fossil fuel subsidies — of which exploration is just one portion — are estimated to be $775 billion a year. 

Key findings in the report show that the U.S. provided some $5.1 billion in national subsidies to fossil fuel exploration in 2013 – almost double the level in 2009.

Australia, meanwhile, is providing $3.5 billion for the development of offshore and inland fossil-fuel resources and Russia is provides $2.4 billion in national subsidies for fossil fuel exploration.

The report noted the Canadian government offers a wide array of national subsidies that total a minimum of $928 million annually to encourage fossil fuel exploration, including tax benefits for nearly all exploration activities.  

“Despite the widespread perception that renewables are costly, our research reveals that finding new fossil fuel reserves is costing nearly $88 billion in exploration subsidies across the G20,” the Overseas Development Institute’s Shelagh Whitley said. “Scrapping these subsidies would begin to create a level playing field between renewables and fossil fuel energy.”  

Oil Change International’s director Stephen Kretzmann said “five years ago, G20 governments pledged to both phase out fossil fuel subsidies and take action to limit climate change. Immediately ending exploration subsidies is the clearest next step on both fronts.”

The report recommended governments should price carbon to reflect the social, economic and environmental damage associated with climate change, and reduce emissions to levels compatible with the globally agreed 2oC target.

It also recommended that G20 nations should immediately phase out exploration subsidies as a first step towards a wider fossil-fuel subsidy phase out and reform.

In addition, it said governments should transfer subsidies from exploration and other fossil-fuel subsidies to support for the transition to low-carbon development and universal energy access.

On the same day the report was published, a number of high-profile economists said in a letter to a number of newspapers that governments should end fossil fuel subsidies and galvanize international action on climate change.

“Given that two-thirds of currently known reserves cannot be exploited if the world is to remain within the internationally agreed 2º Centigrade threshold, this is a bad investment for tax-payers and the planet,” said the economists. “Fossil fuel subsidies turn upside down the logic of effective action on climate.”  


Religious leaders in Australia, according to a story published Wednesday, said “world leaders must move towards a renewable energy future or there will be human suffering on an unthinkable scale.”  

Anglican Church Bishop Professor Stephen Pickard was quoted as saying there is overwhelming scientific evidence about the impact of unchecked climate change.

“To our very great shame, unthinking economic growth has become the great treasure,” Pickard said. “It has captured our hearts. It has captured our pockets. It has blinded us to the wellbeing of the planet.”

Under Prime Minister Tony Abbott, coal-rich Australia, described as “being the developed world’s worst polluter per head of population,” repealed the nation’s carbon tax earlier this year.

Image Credit: Stop sign in the oilsands region. Photo by Kris Krug.

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Canadian oil and gas companies could be liable for billions of dollars of damages per year for their contribution to climate change caused by toxic greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study published Thursday.

The study looked at five oil and gas companies currently trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange — Encana, Suncor, Canadian Natural Resources, Talisman, and Husky — and found they could presently be incurring a global liability as high as $2.4 billion annually.

“Climate change is increasingly discussed not as some far-off threat but in terms of current realities,” said the 62-page study — Payback Time? What the internationalization of climate litigation could mean for Canadian oil and gas companies.

Published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL), the study found data showing the global financial cost of private and public property and other damage associated with climate change in 2010 has been estimated at $591 billion, rising to $4.2 trillion in 2030.

“That number is expected to increase dramatically in the coming years,” said the study written by Andrew Gage, WCEL staff counsel and University of British Columbia professor Michael Byers.

“In Canada, the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy has estimated that climate change will cost $5 billion annually by 2020. Given these significant costs, attention will inevitably shift to the issue of compensation and liability. In short, who will pay for the costs and damages caused by climate change, as well as the necessary adaptive measures?”

Fossil fuel companies and other large-scale greenhouse gas producers have contributed, globally, to trillions of dollars of damages related to climate change, Gage said in an accompanying media release.

“As with tobacco companies in the 1980s, these producers are confident the law will not hold them responsible for these damages,” Gage added.

“But rising levels of climate damage, increasing scientific evidence about the links between emissions and the damage they cause, and an emerging public debate about who is financially responsible for this damage, could change the situation very quickly.”

The most serious risk to Canadian companies is not litigation in Canada, the media release said. “Because the impacts and causes of climate change are global, climate damages litigation could take place in, and apply the laws of, any of the countries where damage occurs.”

Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law, said substantial shifts will be required of large-scale greenhouse gas producers and their investors if they hope to manage the risk of climate damages litigation.

Those shifts include “moving away from fossil fuels, and supporting the adoption of international agreements that could link the reduction of liability risk to the provision of financial assistance or future emission reductions.”

The study concluded that the potential for climate damages litigation is global in scope.

“Cases could be brought in a large number of countries, under a wide range of legal theories, then enforced in Canada or other countries in which greenhouse gas producing companies have assets,” the study said.

“As a result, these companies and their shareholders are exposed to significant legal and financial risks — and these risks will only grow.”

In a telephone interview, Gage told DeSmog Canada that he is not aware of any successful climate damages litigation anywhere in the world, even in the highly litigious U.S.

“This is very new and in very early days but it is evolving fairly rapidly,” he said. “I would think there would be lawsuits of this type outside the U.S. within a couple of years but we’ll have to see.”

In a related commentary in Thursday’s Globe and Mail, Gage and Byers said climate change is no longer a distant threat.

“Canadian oil and gas companies could soon find themselves on the hook for at least part of the damage,” they wrote. “For as climate change costs increase, a global debate has begun about who should pay.”

They also noted Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu recently called on global leaders to hold those responsible for climate damages accountable.

“Just 90 corporations – the so-called carbon majors – are responsible for 63 per cent of CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution,” Tutu was quoted as saying. “It is time to change the profit incentive by demanding legal liability for unsustainable environmental practices.”

Image Credit: Zack Embree

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This article originally appeared on mikedesouza.com.

On the eve of an international climate change summit of government leaders in New York, Canada is being challenged about its own domestic record in addressing the heat-trapping pollution that contributes to global warming.

Here’s a historical timeline of some of the major climate change policies, statements and related decisions made by Canada since 2006 when Prime Minister Stephen Harper was first elected to form a government.

From a pledge to introduce a carbon tax in 2007 to internal debates about climate change science, this timeline covers the promises and the action by the Canadian government in recent years.

February 2006:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is sworn in after his Conservative Party wins a general election with a minority of seats in the Canadian House of Commons. The election ends a 13-year-old government led by the Liberal Party of Canada.

Harper’s Conservatives mainly focused on accountability and tax cuts during the campaign. They also criticized Canada’s participation in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, pledging to introduce a “made-in-Canada” solution to promote a healthy environment.

The newly-elected government cancels billions of dollars in federal spending to address climate change and promote energy efficiency. They also cancel work underway within Environment Canada to regulate greenhouse gases from large industrial facilities, describing the country’s legally-binding Kyoto target as unrealistic.

Harper and members of his cabinet note that the previous Liberal administration had promised to take action on climate change, but didn’t do anything to stop the rise in industrial greenhouse gas emissions that put Canada’s Kyoto target out of reach.

May 2006:

The Globe and Mail reports on leaked documents from international climate talks in Bonn, Germany, that reveal the Harper government has instructed its negotiators to oppose “stringent targets” for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The newspaper reports that the instructions tell negotiators to instead favour a voluntary approach to addressing climate-warming pollution.

Environmental groups accuse the government of sabotaging the talks. It’s the first of many conferences over the next decade in which critics describe Canada as the worst and least helpful party at the negotiating table on climate change issues.

September 2006:

Environment Minister Rona Ambrose pledges to introduce a new law that would use the federal government’s constitutional authority to require all industrial sectors to reduce pollution. Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers president Pierre Alvarez says that his industry is prepared to accept targets as long as other sectors faced the same regulations.

The opposition, which forms a majority in the House of Commons, would later reject her proposed legislation as inadequate. The opposition parties would then attempt to rewrite the bill, but the new version was abandoned by the Conservative government that claimed it would harm the Canadian economy.

March 2007:

Preserving the environment is one of the top themes of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s federal budget. The plan includes $4.5 billion in spending “to clean our air and water, reduce greenhouse gases and combat climate change, as well as protect our natural environment.” The budget also restores funding to some measures that were scrapped, one year earlier, by the government, reintroducing them with new names.

April 2007:

Environment Minister John Baird unveils new targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution across the Canadian economy. The targets set new goals that are aggressive, but weaker than Canada’s existing commitments, under the Kyoto Protocol. Baird says that the new targets will come into force as early as 2010 for some sectors at an estimated cost of about $8 billion to the Canadian economy.

The Conservative plan proposes to give companies the possibility of meeting their targets by paying a $15 carbon tax per tonne of emissions that would go into a fund supporting the development of new technologies.

Baird’s new “Turning the Corner” plan also estimates the targets will also result in health benefits worth about $6 billion due to a reduction in air pollution and related respiratory illnesses.

“This is a mammoth undertaking,” Baird tells a news conference in Toronto. “It doesn’t end today. Global warming, climate change is one of the biggest ecological threats the environment has ever faced, and it’s going to require work every day, every week, every month and every year.”

Despite extensive consultations with all major industrial sectors over the previous year, Baird explains that more negotiations with industry would likely follow before introducing any draft regulations.

June 2007:

Speaking to an audience in Germany, Prime Minister Stephen Harper describes climate change as “perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today.” He also notes that Canada was a small contributor to global warming since it was responsible for two per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“But we owe it to future generations to do whatever we can to address this world problem,” Harper says. “And Canadians, blessed as we are, should make a substantial contribution to confronting this challenge.”

He also says in his speech that his government has already introduced mandatory emissions reductions targets for large emitters that would result in “absolute reductions in emissions levels by at least 2012 and as early as 2010.”

October 2008:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative party is re-elected as a minority government in a general election, following a campaign in which the party pledged to introduce a cap and trade system as part of its climate change policies. The system would set targets to cap pollution from industry and then allow facilities to meet targets either by reducing emissions or by purchasing credits. The credits could be sold provided that they have certified a reduction in emissions beyond business as usual.

Harper names Jim Prentice as his third environment minister after winning the election.

The global financial crisis and lobbying from industry warning about economic impacts would later derail legislation in the U.S. to introduce a cap and trade system.

December 2009:

An international climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark collapses without a binding agreement.

Stephen Harper signs a new voluntary climate change accord spear-headed by U.S. President Barack Obama. Harper weakens Canada’s previous target set under Baird’s Turning the Corner proposal, but matches a target set by the Obama administration.

February 2010:

Jim Prentice criticizes the Quebec government for planning its own aggressive fuel economy tailpipe standards for cars, describing the province’s approach as a “folly.”

October 2010:

The Harper government adopts new fuel economy rules, based largely on the Quebec and California model, matching regulations introduced by the Obama administration to reduce tailpipe pollution from new cars. Environment Canada estimates the new regulations will save the equivalent of 28 billion litres of fuel between 2011 and 2016. Jim Prentice sayshigher costs of purchasing cars would be offset by savings in fuel consumption and that the regulations would also encourage more electric cars on Canadian roads.

November 2010:

Prentice resigns from federal politics to accept a job as a vice-president of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and is temporarily replaced as environment minister by John Baird.

December 2010:

John Baird hails a series of agreements reached at an international climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico as the “first step” toward a binding global deal to ensure greenhouse gases peak within a decade and then start to decline. But he also warns that it would be mathematically impossible to stabilize emissions in the atmosphere without getting the biggest polluters, China, India and the United States, to take on firm commitments.

“I hope that coming out of Cancun that people, other countries will reflect,” Baird says. “Whatever we’ve been trying for the last 13 years hasn’t worked. Emissions are way up since 1997. If we want to stabilize them by 2015 or 2020, we’re going to have to get the big players involved.”

January 2011:

Peter Kent becomes Stephen Harper’s fourth environment minister and begins his new role by praising Canadian oil as an “ethical” fuel.

February 2011:

The Harper government confirms that it is no longer pursuing a cap and trade regime, but aiming to introduce new mandatory rules and standards for industrial pollution.

Peter Kent says in an interview that the government had a “target” of introducing all of its proposed greenhouse gas regulations by the end of 2011.

May 2011:

Following a general election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are re-elected, this time forming a majority in the House of Commons.

September 2011:

Peter Kent says the spring federal election has delayed work on the oil and gas regulations and that they wouldn’t be introduced in 2011.

Fall 2011:

Environment Canada creates a new group to work on the oil and gas regulations. It includes representatives from the Alberta government, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and three oil companies – Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Cenovus and Suncor. The group meets roughly once every four weeks.

December 2011:

Peter Kent announces that Canada is withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol.

Across the government, officials are working on plans behind the scenes to reduce federal oversight of industrial activities and accelerate energy and resource development.

These plans follow a decision by President Obama to delay approval of the Keystone XL pipeline expansion project, that would allow for more oilsands exports from Alberta to the United States.

The new federal policies and laws would also respond to many detailed requests from oil, gas and pipeline lobbyists.

In response to questions about the Kyoto withdrawal in the House of Commons, Stephen Harper says: “I have said many times that climate change is a great problem for the world.”

March 2012:

The Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Research is forced to shut its doors after repeated requests for renewed funding fall on deaf ears. The foundation had offered about $120 million in university grants for climate and weather-related research over about 10 years. The total is above the $110 million multi-year grant it received from the government.

The foundation would later rebrand itself as the Canadian Climate Forum, relying on private donors to fund its work.

A labour union representing federal scientists, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, would also estimate that the Canadian government was in the middle of a three-year purge, cutting nearly $3 billion in spending and up to 5,000 jobs from its science-based departments, including many scientific research positions and programs in charge of monitoring air, water, and wildlife.

One of the victims of the cuts is the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Lab – also known as PEARL – a scientific observatory station near Eureka in the high Arctic that loses about a third of its federal funding and is no longer able to remain fully operational throughout the entire year.

The government instead opts to spend millions of dollars to build a new research station that is more than 1,000 kilometres to the southwest.

April 2012:

The Harper government introduces a 400-page document in Parliament that proposes to scrap major Canadian environmental laws and replace them with new legislation.

May 2012:

At international negotiations, Guy Saint-Jacques, then the former chief federal climate change negotiator and ambassador, says that the Canadian government is working towards draft regulations for 2013” in the oil and gas sector.

“Once we have finalized the oil and gas regulations, we will have covered some 60 per cent of our emissions,” Saint-Jacques told his international counterparts.

June 2012:

A series of newly-released letters reveals that Peter Kent has been challenged by many of his caucus colleagues, including the prime minister, to answer questions about whether scientific evidence is real about climate change and whether the phenomenon requires a government response. When asked about the letters, Kent says that having debates and being challenged demonstrates the “vitality of any government.”

July 2012:

New environmental laws adopted by Parliament eliminate nearly 3,000 federal environmental reviews of industrial projects, including hundreds of projects related to oil, gas and pipeline development.

September 2012:

Peter Kent announces the government has finalized its regulations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants, predicting that the new rules will result in the equivalent of taking about 2.6 million vehicles off Canadian roads over 21 years. The new rules are slated to come into force on July 1, 2015.

His department, meantime, confirms it has handed over the monitoring of data for ozone and radiation in the atmosphere, previously done by atmospheric scientists, to an information technology computer expert.

November 2012:

Following damage caused to the U.S. northeast by Hurricane Sandy, Peter Kent says climate change is a “very real and present danger” that governments need to address.

December 2012:

Canada confirms its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol.

February 2013:

Peter Kent says the federal government is “very close” to finalizing new carbon pollution regulations for oil and gas companies.

April 2013:

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, who would later become finance minister in 2014,says in an interview with La Presse that scientists are exaggerating the climate crisis. He follows others in Harper’s cabinet and caucus who had cast doubts on occasion about whether humans are significantly contributing to climate change. Those include the prime minister, junior industry minister Maxime Bernier, former public safety minister Stockwell Day and Senator Nancy Greene Raine, a former Winter Olympic champion skier.

March 2013:

The special group created by Environment Canada to develop greenhouse gas regulations for oil and gas companies has its final meeting.

Environment Canada later explains that its engagement with stakeholders on regulations was continuing on many fronts, but that it was moving toward more targeted discussions.

April 2013:

In internal correspondence with the provincial government in Alberta, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers expresses concerns about stringent climate change policies, suggesting that the government should spend more time studying the issue. The industry lobby group also tells the government that tough regulations won’t satisfy its biggest critics.

June 2013:

Peter Kent says industry groups are cooperating with the government’s efforts to introduce regulations, also noting that companies are concerned about “maximiz(ing) profits for their shareholders.”

July 2013:

After being replaced in a cabinet shuffle by Harper’s fifth environment minister, Leona Aglukkaq, Peter Kent says he was “profoundly disappointed” that the government didn’t complete the oil and gas regulations under his watch. He reiterates that the government was close but had to navigate through many lobby interests as well as concerns of putting jobs or investments at risk.

September 2013:

Leona Aglukkaq’s office prevents her department from publicly stating that the government accepts scientific evidence that humans are causing climate change and takes the matter seriously.

Aglukkaq later gives a television interview in which she casts doubts about whether ice is melting in the Arctic.

October 2013:

The Harper government opens a new session of Parliament with a throne speech saying that it will work with provinces to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas companies.

November 2013:

Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq says she’s “not ready” to introduce new regulations for oil and gas companies.

June 2014:

Stephen Harper, at a joint news conference with visiting Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, suggests other countries aren’t being frank about scaling back climate change policies to protect their economies. He suggests aggressive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including a carbon tax, would harm the economy.

Image Credit: Prime Minister Stephen Harper on his 9th annual Arctic visit. Image courtesy of the Prime Minister of Canada's photo gallery.

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This article originally appeared on mikedesouza.com.

You may have seen this report in the Toronto Star about a mysterious end to a secretive group [an oil and gas pollution committee] that was created to draft new rules to reduce carbon pollution from oil and gas companies.

Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq was asked about the long-delayed rules for oil companies on Tuesday in the House of Commons by NDP environment critic Megan Leslie.

Aglukkaq responded by changing the topic.

“We have taken action on some of the largest sources of emissions in this country, the transportation and the electricity-generation sector,” said Aglukkaq in the Commons. “I’m also looking forward to taking part in the UN climate summit in New York next week to speak to Canada’s record in taking action on climate change.”

Leslie recommended that the federal government should “quit stalling” in addressing climate change.

“After seven years of the government’s broken promises to introduce greenhouse gas rules for the oil and gas sector Canadians are still waiting,” Leslie said.

“Now we hear that Environment Canada has stopped talking to the industry and the Alberta government altogether. In fact, the (federal) government-led committee hasn’t met since March 2013. When will this government quit stalling and when will we see the regulations?”

David McLaughlin, a former senior Conservative government staffer who later led a federal advisory panel on the environment and economy, said any delays in action would increase economic risks.

“Delay in tackling Canada’s top emitting source is short-term economic gain for long-term economic risk,” said McLaughlin, an adviser on sustainability issues at the University of Waterloo’s environment faculty who also served as chief of staff to former prime minister Brian Mulroney. “Market access will be more, not less, assured when Canada comes to grips with a carbon management plan for this sector.”

The latest comments coincided with a new international report – released by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate – that concluded countries could expand their economies by reducing carbon pollution.

Environment Canada estimated earlier this year that greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands increased by 307 per cent between 1990 and 2012. The carbon emissions were projected to grow a further 61 per cent before the end of the decade.

Scientists estimate that humans must reduce global emissions by up to 72 per cent in order to meet an international target, under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, of preventing global warming of more than two degrees Celsius.

In a written statement, Environment Canada confirmed that the group working on oil and gas regulations had stopped meeting in March 2013.

“Since that time, Environment Canada has been engaging provinces, industry and others to discuss the potential for GHG emission reductions from the oil and gas sector,” wrote spokesman Danny Kingsberry in the statement. “As discussions evolved there was a need to explore the specific circumstances and variation within the sector and across the country, resulting in a move away from the working group structure and toward more targeted discussions. Our engagement is continuing on many fronts.”

He added that it would be “premature” to comment specifically about what the group was examining, since the regulations were still under development.

Former environment minister Peter Kent had said in February 2013 that the government was “very close” to finalizing the oil and gas carbon pollution rules.

Here are some questions and answers about the committee:

Who was on the committee? Representatives from three oil and gas companies –Cenovus, CNRL and Suncor as well as the industry lobby group – the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers were on the committee along with representatives from the Alberta government and Environment Canada, which was leading its work.

How do we know about the committee? The existence of the committee of industry and government representatives – created to write rules for industry – was a secret until it was uncovered through records released under access to information legislation.

When was it created? According to internal records, the committee was created in the fall of 2011 and met approximately once every four weeks, until March 2013.

What was it working on when it stopped meeting? According to internal federal and provincial records, the committee had studied a series of options for new regulations.

Responding to questions from the Toronto Star, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers vice president of policy and performance, Alex Ferguson, said it has “consistently” advocated for “balanced carbon policy” that consider the views of investors or would-be investors.

“We believe that government(s) need to move forward on this topic, and we have consistently advocated that they do so with careful and thorough consideration of all consequences – intended and unintended,” Ferguson told the Star.

Behind closed doors, internal records obtained by Greenpeace Canada through provincial freedom of information legislation revealed that industry lobbyists rejected proposals from the Alberta government to introduce tough rules, and instead suggested delaying action to allow for more “study, analysis and consultation.”

At that time, David Daly, the director of fiscal policy at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers argued that tougher rules wouldn’t likely stop critics from asking companies to do more to reduce their climate change footprint.

The environmental lobby group blames the industry lobbyists for derailing the talks.

“This is what happens when a government opens the doors wide to the oil industry and shuts out everyone else,” said Keith Stewart, a Toronto-based climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace Canada. “The upstream oil and gas industry is now the biggest carbon polluter in the country precisely because the Harper government gives in every time they cry poor. Meanwhile, the public foots the ever-rising bill for climate disasters while the oil companies post record profits.”

Stewart said that the toughest proposal on the table from Alberta would tackle part of the increase at a cost of less than $1.00 per barrel of oil, “which is a very small drop in a very large bucket,” he said.

Oil Regs Secret

Image Credit: Kris Krug

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Investments in renewable energies and low-carbon infrastructure can help the environment and the economy at the same time, says a comprehensive new report released Tuesday.

The report — Better Growth Better Climate — found that about US $90 trillion will likely be invested in infrastructure in the world’s cities, agriculture and energy systems over the next 15 years, unleashing multiple benefits including jobs, health, business productivity and quality of life.

“The decisions we make now will determine the future of our economy and our climate,” Nicholas Stern, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, said in a media release.

“If we choose low-carbon investment we can generate strong, high-quality growth – not just in the future, but now. But if we continue down the high-carbon route, climate change will bring severe risks to long-term prosperity,” he said.

Felipe Calderón, Chair of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, said the report refutes the idea that humankind must choose between fighting climate change or growing the world’s economy.

“That is a false dilemma,” Calderón said. “Today’s report details compelling evidence on how technological change is driving new opportunities to improve growth, create jobs, boost company profits and spur economic development. The report sends a clear message to government and private sector leaders: we can improve the economy and tackle climate change at the same time.”

The 71-page report was presented to governments and business and finance leaders at a global launch event at the UN headquarters in New York City, attended by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The report arrives just one week before the UN Climate Summit.

It concluded that countries at all levels of income have the opportunity to build lasting economic growth at the same time as reducing the immense risks of climate change.

“This is made possible by structural and technological changes unfolding in the global economy and opportunities for greater economic efficiency,” the report said. “The capital for the necessary investments is available, and the potential for innovation is vast. What is needed is strong political leadership and credible, consistent policies.”

The next 15 years will be critical, the report said, as the global economy will grow by more than half, a billion more people will live in cities, and rapid technological advances will continue to transform society.

“The next 15 years of investment will also determine the future of the world’s climate system. Climate change caused by past greenhouse gas emissions is already having serious economic consequences, especially in more exposed areas of the world.”

The report added that without stronger action in the next 10 to 15 years it is near certain that global average warming will exceed 2°C, the level the international community has agreed not to cross.

“On current trends, warming could exceed 4°C by the end of the century, with extreme and potentially irreversible impacts. By building up greenhouse gas concentrations and locking in the stock of high-carbon assets, delay in reducing emissions makes it progressively more expensive to shift towards a low-carbon economy.”

The report noted, however, that future economic growth does not have to copy the high-carbon, unevenly distributed model of the past.

It said there is now huge potential to invest in greater efficiency, structural transformation and technological change in three key systems of the economy — cities, land use and energy systems.  

Describing cities as engines of economic growth, the report said how they develop in the future will be critical to the global economy and climate change. “More compact and connected urban development, built around mass public transport, can create cities that are economically dynamic and healthier, and that have lower emissions.”

In terms of land use, the report says productivity will determine whether the world can feed a population projected to grow to over eight billion by 2030, while sustaining natural environments. “Food production can be increased, forests protected and land use emissions cut by raising crop and livestock productivity, using new technologies and comprehensive approaches to soil and water management.”

With regard to energy systems, the report said humankind is on the cusp of a clean energy future. “Coal is riskier and more expensive than it used to be, with growing import dependence and rising air pollution. Rapidly falling costs, particularly of wind and solar power, could lead renewable and other low-carbon energy sources to account for more than half of all new electricity generation over the next 15 years.”

The report also states faulty policy and a reliance on market economics has led to increased emissions. Annual subsidies for clean energy amount to around $100 billion each year, while subsidies for polluting fossil fuels are at about $600 billion.  

“Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies can improve growth and release resources that can be reallocated to benefit people on low incomes. A strong and predictable price on carbon will drive higher energy productivity and provide new fiscal revenues, which can be used to cut other taxes. Well-designed regulations, such as higher performance standards for appliances and vehicles, are also needed.”

The report also said that low-carbon forms of infrastructure are essential to reduce current emissions trajectories. Stimulating innovation in technologies, business models and social practices can also reduce emissions while driving economic growth.

As part of its 10 key recommendations, the report asks politicians to accelerate a low-carbon transformation by integrating climate change considerations into core economic decision-making processes, enter into a strong, lasting and equitable international climate agreement, phase out subsidies for fossil fuels and agricultural inputs as well as incentives for urban sprawl, and introduce strong, predictable carbon prices as part of good fiscal reform and good business practice.

Image Credit: Kris Krug via Flickr

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Global economies must lower carbon emissions by at least five times the levels currently achieved, according to the 2014 Low Carbon Economy Index compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The report – Two degrees of separation: ambition and reality – clearly shows that the global economy has missed the decarbonization target needed to limit global warming to 2 ̊C for the sixth year in a row.

The Low Carbon Economy Index paints a bleak picture of what might happen if politicians and national governments don’t soon get much more aggressive at fighting climate change.

“Confronted with the challenge in 2013 of decarbonizing at 6% a year, we managed only 1.2%,” the report noted.

“To avoid two degrees of warming, the global economy now needs to decarbonize at 6.2% a year, more than five times faster than the current rate, every year from now till 2100. On our current burn rate we blow our carbon budget by 2034, sixty-six years ahead of schedule. This trajectory, based on IPPC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] data, takes us to four degrees of warming by the end of the century.”

But the index also provided some optimism for the future.

Firstly, it said that the E7 group of emerging economies — China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia and Turkey — “appears to have woken up to the business logic of green growth, decarbonizing faster than the G7 for the first recorded time, and substantially so.”

Secondly, it added that in addition to improvements in energy efficiency there has been a rapid growth of renewable energies across both the E7 and the G7, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Referring to recent International Energy Agency data, the report notes that renewables represent 22% of global electricity supply. “Looking forwards, as some renewables approach cost parity with fossil fuels, the stage is set for a policy framework that could further accelerate the renewables roll-out.”

The report added that “avoiding more than two degrees will depend on both G7 and E7 continuing to decouple growth from carbon.”

In an accompanying media release, it also said “2°C of warming is the limit scientists agree is needed to ensuring the serious risks of runaway climate change impacts are avoided.”

Leo Johnson, partner, PwC sustainability and climate change, said that because of a decade of carbon inertia humankind now has to decarbonize at more than five times its current rate to avoid 2°C.

“Making up for the inadequacy to date will be technologically harder, financially costlier, and climactically riskier in the future,” Johnson said.

Jonathan Grant, director, PwC sustainability and climate change, added there has been a subtle change in the carbon rhetoric over the past 12 months.

“The costs of climate inaction – from flooding to energy costs to commodity pricing, to food insecurity – appear to be growing stronger,” Grant said. “A broader recognition is needed by both business and political leaders that taking decisive action to avoid the extremes of climate change is a pre-condition for sustained economic growth.”

In a related article, Grant said the gap between what governments say about climate change and what they are actually doing about it continues to widen.

“While they talk about two degrees at the climate negotiations, the current trend is for a 4C world,” he said. “There is little mention of these two degrees of separation in the negotiations, in policy documents, in business strategies or in board rooms.”

Image credit: Global warming effect in city via Shutterstock.

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Ontario may have shut down its last coal plant earlier this year, but the province still needs to make major cuts to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions it produces if the provincial government is serious about tackling global warming, according to a new report.

“The provincial government hasn’t even delivered on commitments it made seven years ago,” Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller said in a statement on Wednesday.

Miller, who is Ontario’s independent environmental watchdog, did not mince words in his report on the province’s slow progress in reducing its overall carbon footprint. He says Ontario will not meet its 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets “because [Ontario] has taken very little additional action to implement the Climate Change Action Plan it released seven years ago.”

“We need to limit the increase in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius. But that can only be done if we leave two-thirds of the existing oil and natural gas reserves in the ground. People need to understand that brutal fact,” Miller warns.

Ontario’s 2007 Action Plan on Climate Change requires the province to cut its output of greenhouse gas emissions by six per cent by this year and 15 per cent by 2020 (from 1990 levels). Ontario will achieve its 2014 reductions goal largely because of the province-wide coal phase out, but is off track in meeting its 2020 target: 

“GHG emissions will exceed the target by 28 Mt (megatonnes) in 2020. This is a significant amount; it is almost twice the total emissions from the electricity sector in 2012,” according to Miller’s report.

Ontario GHG emissions measured in megatonnes.

Transportation Is Ontario’s Achilles Heel

Despite Ontario’s coal phase out — the “single largest regulatory action in North America” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — and a 21 per cent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions produced by industry in Ontario since 1990, the province’s overall carbon footprint remains relatively unchanged.

Ontario's GHG emissions by sector.

“Partially offsetting these reductions, however, has been the 24 per cent increase in emissions from the transportation sector since 1990. The transportation sector remains the largest contributor to the overall provincial inventory,” the report states.

 “The 2007 Action Plan said the government would reduce transportation emissions by 19 megatonnes (Mt) by 2020. That goal, unfortunately, has now been cut by almost 80 per cent. I have been given no reason why, and no explanation about what the Ontario government plans to do instead,” Miller writes.

Transportation currently accounts for 34 per cent of Ontario’s carbon footprint. The provincial government revised its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in 2012 for the transportation sector from 19 megatonnes to barely four megatonnes. The report insists “it is incumbent” upon the provincial government to explain why the targets for the transportation sector have been so “severely downgraded.”

Transportation GHG emissions by type of vehicle.

A shift from cars to sport utility vehicles (SUVs), pickup trucks and minivans in Ontario spurred on by low oil prices account for much of the increase in emissions within the transportation sector between 1990 and 2005 according to the Environmental Commissioner.

Ontario Needs the Same Type of Leadership That Pushed For the Coal Phase-Out

Miller says that in order for Ontario to take appropriate action on climate change the province needs the same type leadership that led to the coal phase out and to follow the examples of other provinces such as Quebec and British Columbia:

“British Columbia has brought in a carbon tax, Quebec has implemented a cap-and trade system for carbon credits. Meanwhile, Ontario appears to have lost the ambition it once had and won’t even look at directives to ensure more compact urban development or a serious commitment to using electricity for transportation,” Miller says.

Sink or Swim: Ontario Needs to Adapt to Climate Change Too

The Environmental Commissioner also recommends Ontario begin implementing strategies to adapt to a changing climate, particularly in regards to improving stormwater management practices. 

“Ontario has always experienced storms; however, the province has recently faced more intense and frequent extreme weather, as well as unprecedented damages costs,” the Environmental Commissioner’s report states.

A rainstorm in Toronto last summer saturated the city in a two-hour period with twice the amount of precipitation Toronto usually gets for the entire month of July (126 millimetres). That resulted in 1.3 billion litres of bypassed sewage flowing into Lake Ontario over 28 hours without residents being notified.

In total, 4.2 billion litres of sewage bypassed treatment plants and flooded into waterways in Toronto alone last year.

“We are having changes to our climate here, so we’re seeing more and more intensive rain than we have in the past,” Mark Mattson, president of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper told DeSmog Canada.

“The latest scientific evidence shows that the pace of climate change is accelerating. Extreme weather events have increased dramatically around the world,” Miller says. 

Image Credit: Environmental Commissioner of Ontario

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