Climate Change Accountability goes to vote April 1

Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, will be heading for a vote in parliament this Wednesday April 1. It's a private member's bill tabled by NDP MP Bruce Hyer - all three opposition parties actually passed a virtually identical version of this bill (C-377) in June 2008, but it did not get through the Senate before the fall 2008 election.

What's the bill about?

• Bill C-311 is an important test of serious action on climate change. It proposes the deep national emission reduction targets that leading scientists say are required to avoid dangerous climate change, and requires the Minister of the Environment to set a plan with interim targets to get there.

• Bill C-311 also extends the important accountability mechanisms introduced by other bills. By requiring regular reviews of the government’s target plans and policies, this legislation would make sure the government stays on track to meet its targets.

 • Passing C-311 this year would send a powerful statement of Canadian climate leadership to the world, demonstrating that Canada is prepared to play a responsible part in the global climate fight. This leadership is critical to securing a strong global deal at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

The Climate Change Accountability is exactly the thing that is needed within Canada and something that I'm excited about and hoping will pass. It will go a long way to make up for several misdirections by the Canadian government, and even by some of our opposition parties on their stance on the environment.

Getting ready for Earth Hour

It's that time of the year again - Earth Hour has fallen suddenly upon us, soon becoming a tradition marking the beginning of Spring and a few sprightly weeks before Earth Day in April is upon us.

One thing that I will be looking for is whether the Earth Hour hype from last year will be able to sustain its momentum for another spectacular moment tomorrow night. Perhaps I've been a bit preoccupied, but I have been personally feeling that I received less of a push this year to participate in Earth Hour, be it facebook message bombardment, or urging from other peers. Nor have not heard enough of the usual complaints that Earth Hour is meaningless and will not do anything to solve the real problem of climate change.

I'll be celebrating Earth Hour tomorrow at Nathan Phillips Square, and no matter where you are, I hope you participate in this massive peaceful movement for climate change!

Gap still exists in public understanding of climate change

Stopping by a convenience store before boarding the GO train at union station, I made some pleasantries with the store clerk about the weather and how it had taken a sudden cold twist after some teasingly warm days.

"I know," he said. "All this talk about climate change must be wrong!"

This of course, is not an unusual reaction that I often encounter in conversations all the time, the link between long winters and cold weather and the belief that we are not experiencing climate change. The term "global warming" and misunderstandings on what climate change actually is and how it works, often leads people to erroneously link real time weather patterns of colder days or longer winters as evidence against climate change.

The reality is of course, that yes, although climate change involves the overall warming of the planet through the greenhouse gas effect and most particularly will (is) melting the arctic ice caps, our day to day experience with climate change will not necessarily be  the disappearance of snow (though its never discounted)

Due to rising sea levels and the warming of surface sea temperatures, climate change is expected to dramatically alter global weather patterns that could lead to increased droughts in Europe, heavier rainfalls during the monsoon season leading to devastating floods to name a few examples. The increased severity of storms and hurricanes coming out of the gulf in recent years is finally making the connection clear between climate change and storm strength amongst scientists.

So the next time someone makes an offhand remark about "global warming not happening" because of personal experiences with weather, take the time to do a little climate education - only if you have the time - my experience with the store clerk was cut short as I needed to run to catch my GO train.

Is the environmental movement too negative?

"If we don't act now, the consequences will be catastrophic"

I too, have been guilty of this sort of this type of fear-mongering, in urges to the public to raise their awareness on the environment and promote sustainable attitudes and actions. However, I have been beginning to think lately how effective the negative tone of the environment movement is on the general public and the changing consciousness of Canadians.

It is all to easy to highlight the detriments of our attitudes, actions, and societies in the human damage that we are causing to our environment. In fact, we are surrounded by it: we're told not to waste because of images of landfills, not to drive SUVs for fear of worsening smog and the plights of asthmatic children and so on. And the biggest issue of all, climate change, is painted as this huge catastrophe waiting on the horizon.

But is trying to appeal to people's fear more effective than appealing to positive emotions? Perhaps what will engage the general public with the environmental movement, is to promote a rhetoric in building a future we do want, rather than warning actions certain actions to prevent a future we don't.

Indeed, on what is still sometimes a decisive issue (climate change), it may be better to focus on what we can all agree on, such as having a clean, healthy future, and anchor our messages and campaigning around those associated values and images.

Especially in a time where the doom and gloom crown seems to be worn by the economy and the recession, the environmental movement could stand to gain by being rebranded an issue of unexpected hope and optimism.

Canada concedes link between polar bear survival and climate change

Talks this week in Norway on the 1973 polar bear treaty have ended with all signatory countries (including Canada) concurring that melting sea ice is now the biggest single threat to the future survival of polar bears. 

The struggling polar bear has long been the iconic symbol to the effects that climate change is wreaking to habitats and species currently. It is certainly a huge step forward for Canada, as the document commits Canada to taking the polar bear habitat into account when considering industrial and resource projects in the North, affecting possibly energy development in the Arctic.

However, Canada still lags behind many other countries in carbon-cutting measures which would ultimately solve the problem at its roots, rather than increased legislation in hunting measures or industrial development.

Canada was also accused this week in Norway of being reluctant to sign onto the agreement, though Environment Minister Jim Prentice disagree.

"I don't think anyone disagrees the whole process of climate change has implications for polar bears," Prentice told the Winnipeg Free Press. "What those implications are is still under scientific investigation. It could be positive, it could be negative."

Canada has roughly 60% of the 20-25,000 polar bears still in existence around the world. Projections by Climate Change and Species report commissioned by WWF and Earth Hour indicate the polar bears may be extinct before the end of the century due to rising sea levels and melting ice caps.

"We may not know the asteroid is about to hit us until it's over our heads"

There was a great article yesterday in Time Magazine that basically addresses the question: what is the tipping point? The article explores at what point will gradual changes in the earth's climate due to climate change finally results in sharp, sudden irreversible changes that could result in the complete collapse of the ice sheets on Greenland, or desiccation of the Amazon rain forest? The ice on Greenland alone contains enough water to raise global sea levels by six metres, and the effects may be to terrible for us to cope.

Elmar Kriegler of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany posed the "what is the tipping point" to 43 of the world's top climatologists. How much more carbon needs to be pumped into the atmosphere and how much warmer does the earth need to get for us to reach this catastrophic stage in climate change?

Their answers? They don't really know.

The uncertainty obviously has an impact on the world's response to climate change. How are policy makers and world leaders suppose to feel the urgency of climate change when there is not end date, no immediate damage to be done now? Yes, reports are coming in that the Arctic ice cap has shrunk and species are rapidly going extinct, but climate change inevitably is trumped by other urgent concerns such as the recession and wars.

The tipping point could happen this century or the next, but the reality is the climate system is too complex and the future to difficult to predict to know when the point of no return is. In the words of the article, "we may not know the asteroid is about to hit us until it's over our heads."

Students urge UofT President to sign President's Climate Initiative

Students, faculty and staff have been actively campaigning for the past several weeks for UofT President David Naylor to sign on to the President's Climate Initiative, a declaration that commits universities and colleges in Canada's to reduce the level of greenhouse gases emitted on campus. As Envirofest, UofT's annual week of environmental activities, commences Monday the organizers have stepped up the pressure on Naylor and the administration to sign on to the commitment that would see the campus become climate neutral in years to come.

The President's Climate Initiative originally began in the United States as a way for universities to commit to completing an emissions investory, and within two years, setting a target date and interim milestones for becominng climate neutral across campus. Thus far 616 American and 13 Canadian colleges and universities have signed on to the plan. If UofT were to sign, it would be become to first institution in Ontario to do so.

For more information on the President's Climate Initiative (US website), click here.

Poll: 41% of Americans think climate change is "exaggerated"

A recent Gallup poll released last week now finds that 41% of Americans believe climate change is exaggerated. Gallup polling says that this represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade. According to the poll, in the past year Republican doubters grew from 59% to 66%, independents 33% to 44%, while the rate of Democrats remained close to 20%.

The poll details, other results and survey methods can be found at Gallup's website here.

Has the recent media focus on climate change and general rise in "green attitudes" started to receive a backlash? What implications does this have politically, especially as policy-makers continue to move slowly on acknowledging the reality of approaching climate catastrophes?

I'm curious to see what results would a similar poll done in Canada would reveal about the level of public skepticism on climate change. 

Youth activists turn out in droves in Washington

On February 27-March 1st, 12,000 young leaders from 10 Canadian provinces, all fifty states and about a dozen other nations gathered at the Washington D.C. Convention Center for Power Shift 2009, the largest ever gathering of climate and clean energy activists in North American history. On March 2 they later marched to Capitol Hill with messages of a clean and just energy future.

The movement on display at Power Shift 2009 consisted of literally thousands of student groups on hundreds of high school, community college and university campuses, a growing number of coordinated statewide networks, and dozens of official NGOs.

But is this just another pro-environment youth gathering, or was Power Shift 2009 signaling something much more important that all of us should be paying attention to?

Many Power Shift organizers, giddy from the massive turnout, proclaimed that the weekend's successful events are a sign that "the youth climate movement, the largest and most sophisticated grassroots movement to emerge in decades, has finally come of age," wrote Jesse Jenkins, blogger at the Huffington Post.

Young climate activists have been using and slowly perfecting for decades the tactics that made Obama's campaign so successful, he says, the likes of which politicians around the world including Canada are desperate to replicate.

These include taking advantage of young environmentalists being the most networked generation in history with an ever growing arsenal of Skype, Facebook, Email, MySpace, twitter, text messages and more to rally and connect disparate individuals. Indeed, judging by last weekend's turnout the youth climate movement have also seemingly surmounted the bridge between online strength and offline organizing.

"Just think: ten years ago when a person could just sit on a bench and pull all of the knowledge of the world onto their laps, they'd be considered a god. Now, that's just you, with a laptop, and Google!" said green jobs advocate Van Jones. "Cease using those technologies as toys and start using them as tools."

The question always remains whether the rally itself will be effective in garnering the results that these passionate and eternally hopeful youth yearn in their future. One thing is for sure however: the face of youth activism will never be the same.

Canada will fail if there's no tar sands plan, say expert

An interesting interview came out Monday in the Hill Times with Andrew Nikiforuk, a Calgary-based economic and environmental journalist, who called on Canada to develop a 30 year plan sustainable development plan for the oil sands. Nikiforuk argued that Canada will fail as a nation if the billion dollar industry and its environmental impacts are not addressed.

Quoting from the article: "We need a 30-year plan for this project, we need a national debate about the scale and pace of development and then we need a program that says for every kilogram of carbon we produce there, we have to take two out of the economy somewhere else," he said. "It's probably the issue that is the most defining issue in Canada at the moment. Everything is tied to it."

Others have recently piped into the argument, with former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed saying that the oil sands will lead to an "inevitable" constitutional clash between "the federal right to protect the environment and the provincial right to exploit natural resources."

Nikiforuk criticized Ignatieff for "playing politics" with the oil sands because "he wants to win votes in Alberta."