OTTAWA – Canada will officially become the first country to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol climate change agreement Saturday, following years of criticism from the Harper government and lobbying from major industrial polluters.The withdrawal, first announced by Environment Minister Peter Kent in 2011, coincides with new public opinion research by the Environics Institute that shows more than half of Canadians support British Columbia’s carbon tax and believe governments should show more leadership with regulations and standards to get consumers and industry to change their habits and slash heat-trapping pollution.
“We (Canadians) are a large emitter of greenhouse gases, despite what the government would like us to believe,” said Steven Guilbeault, a veteran environmentalist who co-founded Equiterre, a Montreal-based conservation group. “We’ve contributed more than our fair share to this problem over the last few decades, so we have a moral obligation to do everything we can and to do our part, which we’re not doing right now to solve the problem.”
The 1997 agreement, signed in Kyoto, Japan, required developed countries to collectively reduce their emissions by about five per cent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.
Kent declined interview requests from Postmedia News, but has previously said Canada supports efforts to reach a new binding deal by 2015 – coming into force by 2020 – that requires action from all major polluting countries, such as China, which was not required to meet binding targets under Kyoto, and the United States, which never ratified the agreement.
Guilbeault, who scaled the CN tower in 2001, posting a banner calling on the federal government to ratify Kyoto, said it’s easy for some critics to point fingers at the world’s largest sources of greenhouse gas pollution in China and the U.S., but that Canada must also join a collective effort to avert dangerous climate change.
The agreement’s legally binding targets, accepted by the Canadian Parliament in 2002, also helped create a free market global system that encouraged green technologies, while requiring polluters to pay for their emissions, prompting anti-Kyoto lobbying and marketing campaigns from the business community and climate change skeptics.
Meantime, the Focus Canada 2012 survey, an annual tracking poll of 1,500 Canadians conducted by the Environics Institute in November, revealed that 57 per cent of Canadians now believe it’s “reasonable” for the average household to pay $100 per year in higher taxes to support climate change action, up from 47 per cent from August 2008.
The poll also revealed that 64 per cent of respondents in British Columbia now supported the government’s carbon tax on gasoline and other fossil fuels, up from 54 per cent in 2008. Over the four years, the percentage of Canadians who believed governments should implement new standards and regulations to tackle climate change rose from 46 to 59 per cent, with the rest believing industry and consumers should take a larger role.
Kent formally announced that the Harper government was giving its required one-year notice to pull out of the Kyoto treaty at a news conference outside the House of Commons in December 2011. At the time, he argued that it would cost $14 billion for Canada to remain in Kyoto, but he later backtracked from this estimate, saying the amount would fluctuate based on prices in a volatile market. Those penalties would not necessarily apply if Canada had joined others such as Japan, remaining in Kyoto without accepting new targets for the next commitment period of the agreement.
NDP deputy leader and environment critic Megan Leslie said the government should have held a debate in Parliament to explain its decision.
“I don’t think that putting Peter Kent behind a podium for a minute and a half to spout nonsense is a good enough equivalent either,” she said. “I think that Canadians and Parliamentarians should be able to ask questions (and they) should be able to understand the reasoning.”
The Green Party of Canada described the withdrawal as shameful.
“In the past, we’ve always had a reputation for environmental achievements that exceeded what we actually achieved, but we were at least compliant with global treaties until recently,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May. “The withdrawal from Kyoto is a devastating blow and a blot on our reputation in our role, as well as being a significant threat to our kids future.”
The Environics Institute survey also found that only 12 per cent of Canadians were skeptical that global warming is occurring, while 57 per cent believe the science is conclusive that it’s happening and is being caused by human activity.
Belief in the science was lowest among those without a high school diploma, 60 years and older, as well as 23 per cent of supporters of the Conservative party.
TIMELINE
A few key dates in international climate change discussions
1979: First World Climate Conference takes place in Geneva, Switzerland.
1992: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change created. Under the international treaty, countries agreed to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.
1994: UNFCCC comes into force.
1995: Countries begin to negotiate binding agreement to require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
December 1997: Kyoto Protocol signed, laying out legally binding emission targets for developed countries to reduce emissions by an average of 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. The treaty also requires developing countries to track and report emissions and develop national climate change policies.
2002: Canada’s Parliament ratifies the Kyoto Protocol
February 2005: After enough countries have ratified the treaty, the Kyoto Protocol comes into force. The United States, which signed the treaty, declines to ratify the agreement and is not bound by any targets.
2007: Bali Road Map adopted, laying the foundation for new efforts to adapt to a changing climate while helping both developed and developing countries reduce their emissions.
2008: First Kyoto commitment period begins.
2009: A climate summit in Copenhagen collapses without a binding agreement. But many countries draft an agreement with voluntary emission reduction targets.
2010: Cancun Agreements create a Green Climate Fund to help developing nations deal with the effects of climate change and reduce their global-warming causing emissions.
2011: Durban conference ends with countries agreeing to new climate change regime to be finalized by 2015.
2012: Leaked draft of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report on latest scientific research says scientists are “virtually certain” human activity is upsetting the balance in the atmosphere and causing most of the planetary warming observed in recent decades.
2012: Canada withdraws from the Kyoto Protocol.
2013: Beginning of second Kyoto commitment period.
2015: International deadline to finalize new agreement on emission target reductions.
2020: New global climate change regime slated to come into force.
Source: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Mike De Souza
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