A group of prominent Canadian academics has signed a letter that says the nation is “running a sustainability deficit” when it comes to climate change.

“Unlike budgetary deficits, it does not seem to preoccupy our politicians,” said the letter, penned by at least 53 frustrated academics in advance of the People’s Climate March held in New York City and many other urban centres around the world on Sunday.

“Canada has repeatedly missed its own climate change emission reduction targets. Last January, Environment Canada acknowledged that Canada won’t meet its least ambitious target to date, proposed in 2009 as part of international climate negotiations coined the Copenhagen Accord.”

The academics said that, as researchers who study climate change and sustainability, they strongly support Sunday’s global mobilization, which will include events in numerous Canadian cities.

They pointed out that a U.S. climate action plan indicates that, unlike Canada, the United States will meet its Copenhagen commitment to reduce toxic greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. plan, they added, also emphasizes the positive legacies of confronting climate change including future job security, economic competitiveness, and overall well-being.

“Tomorrow is today; we can no longer wait to take up the opportunity to change course and begin to act. Countries must phase out fossil fuels to transition towards cleaner energy sources thereby guaranteeing both human and environmental well-being.”

The academics said they are cooperating to bring to public attention evidence-based research useful for developing constructive ambitious proposals that can deal with the consequences of global warming.

They also warned federal politicians that they need to start making laws and enacting regulations that reduce the continued growth of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

“In the upcoming 2015 [national] election, Canadians will have an opportunity to demand that politicians and parties protect Canada’s social well-being, economic competitiveness and extraordinary environmental assets by addressing climate change,” the academics said.

“Moving quickly and effectively on climate change will require a national conversation from all corners of society, a conversation we hope will benefit from evidence-based research on pathways forward.”

They said Canada’s current inaction on sustainability hinders the nation’s ability to play a positive role in the negotiations leading to the Paris climate change conference where more than 190 countries will meet in December 2015.

“We believe Canada should act as a leader rather than a laggard in this process,” the academics said.

One of the aims of the Paris conference is to produce an international climate change agreement that would limit warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius higher this century than pre-industrial temperatures in order to avoid potentially devastating consequences associated with global warming.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says, however, that the world is not on track to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius.

IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said in 2013 that an agency report indicates “the path we are currently on is more likely to result in a temperature increase of between 3.6 °C and 5.3 °C.”

The academics’ letter added it is time to accelerate the transition towards a low-carbon society ensuring that the next generation of Canadians can inherit a productive economy with high social well-being standards, live in sustainable cities and enjoy Canada’s unique wildlife, pristine lakes and ice capped mountains.

“For that world to be ours tomorrow, we must act today.”

A list of the Canadian academics who signed the letter can be seen here.

The People’s Climate March takes place two days before UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has invited Heads of State to a Climate Summit in New York City designed to generate momentum for acting on climate change.

Image Credit: James Rowe via Flickr

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Aggressively tackling global warming through better public transportation and increased energy efficiencies could increase global GDP by between $1.8 trillion and $2.6 trillion annually, a new report has found.

Released on Monday, the report by the World Bank and the ClimateWorks Foundation said tackling global warming now would also save as many as 94,000 lives a year from pollution-related diseases and reduce crop losses.

The report — Climate-Smart Development: Adding Up the Benefits of Actions that Help Build Prosperity, End Poverty and Combat Climate Change — shows the potential gains from scaling up pro-climate policies.

“The report’s findings show clearly that the right policy choices can deliver significant benefits to lives, jobs, crops, energy, and GDP — as well as emissions reductions to combat climate change,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said.

Written in advance of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Summit in New York in September, the report looks at benefits that ambitious climate mitigation policies can generate across the transportation, industry and building sectors, as well as in waste and cooking fuels. It focuses on Brazil, China, India, Mexico, the United States and the European Union.

By 2030, the report said, pro-climate government policies on clean transport and improved energy efficiency in factories, buildings and appliances could increase global GDP growth by an estimated $1.8 trillion to $2.6 trillion a year.                                                                  

Those policies could prevent the production of greenhouse gas emissions roughly equivalent to taking two billion cars off the road, the report said, while accounting for 30 per cent of the total emissions reduction needed in 2030 to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius.

“This report shows that well-designed climate mitigation efforts can result in important economic and social benefits, and provides a frameworks for assessing those benefits,” ClimateWorks Foundation president Charlotte Pera said.

Meanwhile, another major study published Tuesday showed that the U.S. economy already faces multiple and significant risks from climate change.

The study — Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change to the United States — said it's clear that staying on the current business-as-usual path will only increase the nation’s exposure to climate-change-related risks.

“The U.S. climate is paying the price today for business decisions made many years ago, especially through increased coastal storm damage and more extreme heat in parts of the country,” the study said.

“Every year that goes by without a comprehensive public and private sector response to climate change is a year that locks in future climate events that will have a far more devastating effect on our local, regional and national economies.”

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson and Tom Steyer, retired founder of Farallon Capital Management, co-chaired the Risky Business project.

“Damages from storms, flooding and heat waves are already costing local economies billions of dollars — we saw that firsthand in New York City with Hurricane Sandy,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “With the oceans rising and the climate changing, the Risky Business report details the costs of inaction in ways that are easy to understand in dollars and cents — and impossible to ignore.”

Concurring, Paulson said the U.S. economy is vulnerable to an overwhelming number of risks from climate change.

“If we act immediately, we can still avoid most of the worst impacts of climate change and significantly reduce the odds of catastrophic outcomes — but the investments we’re making today will determine our economic future,” Paulson said.

Steyer said climate change is nature’s way of charging the nation compound interest for doing the wrong thing.

“The longer we wait to address the growing risks of climate change, the more it will cost us all. From a business perspective, given the many benefits of early action, it would be silly to allow these risks to accumulate to the point where we can no longer manage them,” he said.

Looking at climate impacts from now to 2100, the study notes that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases can stay in the atmosphere for hundreds or even thousands of years, leading to higher temperatures, higher sea levels and shifts in global weather patterns.

“By not acting to lower greenhouse gas emissions today, decision-makers put in place processes that increase overall risks tomorrow, and each year those decision-makers fail to act serves to broaden and deepen those risks,” the study warned.

Photo by kaffeeeinstein

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The hotel rental for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s September visit to New York City cost Canadian taxpayers a total of $65,582.91 according to documents recently released by CTV News.

“Canada and the U.S. are making important progress on enhancing trade, travel and investment flows between our two countries, including securing our borders, speeding up trade and travel, modernizing infrastructure in integrated sectors of the North American economy, and harmonizing regulations,” Harper said at the event. “But there is much more that can be done, and must be done, to make our economic relationship more productive and seamless.” 

The event, organized by the Canadian American Business Council, gave Harper the opportunity to tell an audience of American business executives that he wouldn’t “take no for an answer” on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, planned to carry tar sands crude from Alberta to oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

The hotel bill for the luxurious New York Palace Hotel, which was mistakenly sent to CTV’s Washington bureau, suggests Harper’s speaking engagement was a staged promotional gathering for the Keystone XL, rather that a typical guest speaker event which are usually paid for by the host.

The hotel charges include coffee services for $6,650.00, room rental for $33,500.00 and audio visual services of $14,709.15. An overall service charge for the room and coffee came to $9,234.50.

According to CTV, the event was co-hosted with the Canadian American Business Council, which claimed to ‘share’ the costs for the event with the Harper Government.

Maryscott Greenwood, senior advisor for the Council said, “the costs were shared…we paid for pieces of it.”

On their website the Canadian American Business Council claims to be “the voice of business in the world’s most prosperous relationship. Established in 1987 in Washington, D.C., the Council is a non-profit, non-partisan, issues-oriented organization dedicated to elevating the private sector perspective on issues that affect our two nations, Canada and the United States.”

Membership to the Council requires a $5,500 annual fee, with conference sponsorships running up to $25,000 per event. Members of the Council include the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Embassy, the Government of Alberta and TransCanada among many other major oil and gas companies.

In 2012, the Council listed “Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring Canadian crude oil to the U.S. gulf refineries” in its top ten ‘list of issues.’

Andrew Shaw, who works for the Council, is also a registered lobbyist for the Keystone XL pipeline with KcKenna, Long & Aldridge. Shaw was hired by TransCanada to lobby on the topic of "permitting issues regarding the Keystone XL pipeline," lobbying disclosure documents show.

According to further lobbyist documents, Shaw was also hired by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Canada’s largest oil and gas lobby firm, to speak with members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives about American environmental legislation or policies that might have implications on the development of Canada’s tar sands.

A recent white paper report released by DeSmog Canada shows TransCanada has spent $2.78 million on in-company lobbyists and $1.26 million on U.S. based lobby firms, including McKenna, Long & Aldridge, since 2010.

The white paper also shows that since 2010-2011 the Harper Government’s spending of taxpayer funds to promote the tar sands and Canada’s environmental performance has increased by 7000 percent with plans to further increase in the 2013-2014 year.

For more information on lobbying for the Keystone XL, see this backgrounder put together by Friends of the Earth or read about the pipeline on DeSmogblog.com.

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This past weekend David Ellis, a CTV photo journalist with 28 years' experience, boarded a plane bound for Malaysia with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Last week Ellis was set to be banned from accompanying Stephen Harper on the upcoming trip because he asked the Prime Minister an unwelcome question during a photo op in New York.

Harper's office backed down after a backlash from the major television networks, including CBC, CTV and Global News, which questioned the role the PMO should play in journalistic coverage of Harper's travels abroad.

Harper was in New York last week for a "highly scripted public program, including a business roundtable" according to Tim Harper of the Toronto Star. Included on Prime Minister Harper's schedule was a photo op with the business leaders, a "staged event" to "make the prime minister look good," during which he "smiles and grabs the hand of whomever he is about to meet."

In 2006 Harper instituted strict rules prohibiting journalists from asking questions during photo ops in Canada and abroad. In Britain and Australia, there are no restrictions on journalists asking questions during photo ops. This rule is occasionally broken in the case of breaking news.

At the time of Harper's New York photo op, David Ellis was concerned with the charging of Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro under the Canada Elections Act for exceeding election spending and donation limits. Del Mastro was Harper's parliamentary secretary, though he's now been stripped of that title and is no longer a member of the Conservative caucus.

After clearing it with his Ottawa office, Ellis asked Harper, who has defended Del Mastro while he was being investigated, "Any comment today, sir, about Dean Del Mastro being charged?" Stephen Harper declined to answer, and all journalists were vacated from the room without incident.

Within one week CTV was notified by the PMO that Ellis would not be allowed on Harper's plane for the seven-day trip to Malaysia and Indonesia even though the journalist had received clearance to work as a pool cameraman.

According to the Canadian Press, the main networks CBC, CTV and Global "[pool] resources on prime ministerial trips in order to cut costs," with each sending its own reporter but taking turns sending camera operators, editors and technicians.

Media travelling with the prime minister pay for their own lodging and transportation.

The networks in the pool backed CTV's decision to send Ellis to board Harper's plane despite the the PMO's order.

When news of the ban became public, Jason MacDonald, the Prime Minister's communications director, issued an email, stating "no accredited Canadian media outlet is prevented from joining us for the upcoming trip to the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation Summit."

"To suggest otherwise is absolutely false," he added, declining at the time to specify whether Ellis would be allowed on the plane.

Following the backlash from the press gallery, the PMO clarified Ellis would accompany Harper after all. "I'm not going to get into the issue . . . all that matters is he will be on the trip,'' said MacDonald.

"Asking a question of an elected official shouldn't be a punishable offence," Daniel Thibeault, president of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery, told the Star.

As Tim Harper of the Star puts it, "picking and choosing who you want on your plane covering an official government foreign visit is one step short of the PMO flying to Malaysia with its own stenographer who would email back tales of the glorious leader's conquests."

Image Credit: World Economic Forum / Wikimedia Commons

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