This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

With the December Paris climate agreement, leaders and experts from around the world showed they overwhelmingly accept that human-caused climate change is real and, because the world has continued to increase fossil fuel use, the need to curb and reduce emissions is urgent.

In light of this, I don’t get the current brouhaha over the Trans Mountain, Keystone XL, Northern Gateway or the Energy East pipelines. Why are politicians contemplating spending billions on pipelines when the Paris commitment means 75 to 80 per cent of known fossil fuel deposits must be left in the ground?

Didn’t our prime minister, with provincial and territorial premiers, mayors and representatives from non-profit organizations, parade before the media to announce Canada now takes climate change seriously? I joined millions of Canadians who felt an oppressive weight had lifted and cheered mightily to hear that our country committed to keeping emissions at levels that would ensure the world doesn’t heat by more than 1.5 C by the end of this century. With the global average temperature already one degree higher than pre-industrial levels, a half a degree more leaves no room for business as usual.

The former government’s drive to make Canada a petro superpower distorted the Canadian economy into greater fossil fuel dependence, with catastrophic consequences when the price of oil collapsed. The lesson should have been learned long ago: Heavy dependence on a single revenue stream like fish, trees, wheat, minerals or even one factory or industry is hazardous if that source suffers a reversal in fortune like resource depletion, unanticipated cost fluctuations or stiff competition.

Coal stocks have already sunk to the floor, so why is there talk of building or expanding coal terminals? Low oil prices have pushed oilsands bitumen toward unprofitability, so why the discussion of expanding this carbon-intensive industry? Fracking is unbelievably unsustainable because of the immense amounts of water used in the process, seismic destabilization and escape of hyper-warming methane from wells. Exploration for new oil deposits — especially in hazardous areas like the deep ocean, the Arctic and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other critical wildlife habitat — should stop immediately.

Pipeline arguments are especially discouraging, with people claiming Quebec is working against the interests of Alberta and Canada because the leadership of the Montreal Metropolitan Community — representing 82 municipalities and nearly half the province’s population — voted overwhelmingly to reject the proposed Energy East pipeline project, which would carry 1.1 million barrels of oilsands bitumen and other oil products from Alberta to refineries and ports in the east. Some have thrown out the anti-democratic and, frankly, anti-Canadian notion that because Quebec has received equalization payments it should shut up about pipeline projects.

National unity is about steering Canada onto a sustainable track and looking out for the interests of all Canadians. Continuing to build fossil fuel infrastructure and locking ourselves into a future of increasing global warming isn’t the way to go about it. Shifting to a 21st century clean-energy economy would create more jobs, unity and prosperity — across Canada and not just in one region — than continuing to rely on a polluting, climate-altering sunset industry. Leaders in Quebec should be commended for taking a strong stand for the environment and climate — and for all of Canada.

The Paris target means we have to rethink everything. Energy is at the heart of modern society, but we have to get off fossil fuels. Should we expand airports when aircraft are the most energy-intensive ways to travel? Why build massive bridges and tunnels when we must transport goods and people differently? The global system in which food travels thousands of kilometres from where it’s grown to where it’s consumed makes no sense in a carbon-constrained world. Agriculture must become more local, so the Peace Valley must serve as the breadbasket of the North rather than a flooded area behind a dam.

The urgency of the need for change demands that we rethink our entire energy potential and the way we live. It makes no sense to continue acting as if we’ve got all the time in the world to get off the path that created the crisis in the first place. That’s the challenge, and for our politicians, it’s a huge task as well as a great opportunity.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

Photo: Shannon Ramos via Flickr

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Climate Nexus has published a helpful mythbusting page correcting the misinformation that is already being spread about the Paris Climate Agreement. It is rewritten here with permission.

Myths and Facts about COP21, the Paris Climate Agreement

MYTH: “Paris is not legally binding; it won’t change anything. China and India will still emit so much CO2 as to make all US reductions pointless.”

FACT: Paris does have legally binding aspects, and other nations are already taking action.

• The Paris Agreement is legally binding in that each country’s pledge represents a domestically binding policy. The US commitment is based off existing law. The Clean Power Plan derives its authority from the Clean Air Act and Supreme Court rulings.

• The international pressure of the “Name and Shame” aspect will provide ample incentive for countries to follow through, as past agreements have demonstrated the efficacy of this informal censure. With India and China joining the US, there is no longer any international support for further inaction.

• China already started carbon markets in 7 regions in 2013, and has plans to begin phasing in a national carbon market in 2016. They recognize the health threat of coal burning, having banned new coal plants in key regions and reduced coal production by nearly 3% over the last year. China is also the largest investor in green energy globally, as seven of the top ten photovoltaic firms in the world are either Chinese firms or have their manufacturing facilities mainly located in China.

• India has committed to installing 100 gigawatts of solar by 2022. This more than quadruples the solar targets India set last fall, and will increase the country’s installed solar capacity by a factor of nearly forty. The US currently has an installed solar capacity of about 16 gigawatts.

MYTH: “Paris will crash the economy and cost the US countless jobs.”

FACT: The clean energy economy is already on its way, as the world has grown GDP while emissions have leveled off, proving that carbon pollution and wealth are not as tied as critics suggest.

• Preliminary data from the International Energy Agency suggests that carbon emissions from the energy sector stalled in 2014, even as the economy continued to grow. In 2014, American energy-related carbon emissions grew by 0.7 percent, while the GDP grew by 2.4 percent.

• The IPCC has also estimated a very low annual GDP cost to climate action. The Global Commission on Economy and Climate found that if we focus heavily on low-carbon investments, it would add less than 5% to the total cost—a cost that would be offset by the economic benefits of things like energy efficient buildings and cleaner air, without even taking into account the many future benefits of avoiding further climate change.

• Comparisons to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol fall flat, even according to Chuck Hagel, who co-sponsored the Congressional opposition to the Kyoto Treaty, on the grounds that not all nations will be held to reductions and it would harm the US economy. He has written in support of the Paris agreement.

MYTH: “Even if pledges are all fulfilled they won’t accomplish much.”

FACT: This claim is based on a single analysis from an author, Bjorn Lomborg, whose bias is questionable. This claim was quickly ridiculed by the scientists whose work is referenced as a supporting factor.

• Already, countries’ commitments have bent the emissions curve significantly. Climate Action Trackerand Climate Interactive, in separate reports, both found that the national pledges have reduced expected warming by almost 1˚C.

• If Paris pledges are ratcheted up successfully as a result of the agreement’s design of five-year reassessments, it may be enough to limit warming to less than 2˚C.  

• The MIT group that Lomborg references to reinforce his findings that Paris pledges won’t do much has said his paper, the basis of this line of attack, “appears to have no basis in fact.”

MYTH: “Regulations aren’t effective. We should simply focus on innovation, invention and the entrepreneurial spirit and adapt to any possible changes.”

FACT: Government policy drives innovation and adaptation alone will not be enough to avoid costly damages.

• Eventually, the IPCC projects that some regions will begin to be uninhabitable, and food production will be threatened above what adaptation can deal with.

• For example, KPMG estimates that climate change could put the total profit of the global food industry at risk by 2030, and the OECD predicts over $45 trillion of assets could be at risk by 2050 due to floods.

• NASA spurred countless inventions and technological developments that grew the global economy. DARPA and ARPA-e have done the same. Government policy sends businesses a signal that there will be a market for types of products, in this case clean energy.

• The focus on innovation and entrepreneurship is a talking point routinely used by the American Petroleum Institute to promote fracking.

MYTH: “Climate change doesn’t cause terrorism, was irrelevant to Syria, and we should address ISIS before worrying about warming.”

FACT: According to the Department of Defense, climate change acts as a “threat multiplier”, helping create conditions that facilitate the rise of unrest and provide a space for terrorism to rise and posingan immediate risk to US national security.

• The Department of Defense has analyzed the climate threat and wrote a climate change adaptation roadmap for addressing the threat of climate change to national security efforts.

• Peer-reviewed science has established a link between climate change and violence generally, andEgypt and Syria specifically.

• Retired Navy Rear Admiral David Titley has written an op-ed summarizing the defense community’s position on climate change being a threat multiplier, creating conditions that are conducive to the rise of terrorism and unrest.

Image credit: UNFCCC

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