Letter to the premiers

Dear Premier,

Re: Request to support KYOTOplus

The climate change crisis has become a priority for governments around the world. Provincial and territorial governments in Canada have an important role to play in curbing this global problem.

To deal with global warming, countries around the world, including Canada, adopted the Kyoto Protocol. As you know, the Canadian commitment under Kyoto calls for a six per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2012. However, successive federal governments have failed to reduce emissions, and by the end of 2006, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions were 29 per cent higher than our Kyoto target for 2012.

Last year, the global community, including Canada, agreed at the United Nations climate conference in Bali to negotiate substantial greenhouse gas reductions for the period between 2012 and 2020. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC -- the international scientific advisory body) has said that industrialized countries must reduce their emissions 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 if we are to avoid a potentially uncontrollable climate crisis.

Tragically, our current minority federal government is ignoring its obligations under Kyoto and has proposed a completely inadequate mid-term target for 2020. In doing so, it is undermining the efforts made by many provincial legislatures to move forward on this issue.

On April 2 2008, major Canadian environmental organizations launched the KYOTOplus campaign in Ottawa. The KYOTOplus pledge has been signed by the leaders of the three opposition parties as well as many individual Liberal, Bloc Québecois and New Democrat members of parliament. In June, opposition politicians also united to support Bill C-377, the Climate Change Accountability Act, that adopted the KYOTOplus targets. Prime Minister Harper was conspicuously absent on April 2nd, and his government has declared that it will simply ignore Bill C-377 when it becomes law.

Stephen Harper has falsely described his government's 2020 target as "one of the most aggressive emission reduction goals in the world". His plan (20 per cent reduction from 2006 levels by 2020) would leave Canada 133 million tonnes short of the KYOTOplus commitment and less than three per cent below 1990 levels. The Harper plan would not even achieve in 2020 the reduction levels that Canada promised the world we would meet for 2012 -- eight years after the 2012 Kyoto deadline. By comparison, the KYOTOplus campaign calls for a greenhouse gas reduction of at least 25 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 per cent by 2050.

As you prepare to attend the Council of the Federation meeting in Québec, it is vitally important for you to speak out now in support of deep greenhouse gas reductions. Canada's position on climate change needs to be changed in time for the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, where the crucial decision on a post-Kyoto agreement will be made. Faced with a failure of leadership on climate change at the federal level, Canada's provinces and territories must take the lead. We are therefore calling on provincial and territorial governments to sign the KYOTOplus pledge. To this end, we are enclosing a copy of the pledge and the list of sponsoring organizations. Thank you in advance for your consideration of this request. Members of the KYOTOplus campaign from your region will contact you in the near future to discuss these important issues.

Yours truly, Arthur Sandborn, Climate and Energy Campaigner, Greenpeace

Jean Langlois, National Campaigns Director, Sierra Club of Canada

Graham Saul, Executive Director, Climate Action Network