Feature story - February 2, 2010
The Harper government announced a new target for climate change emissions on Saturday January 30, 2010 that is much worse than its previous target.
Ottawa gets it wrong again on climate change
The announcement was made to fulfill a condition of the Copenhagen Accord which called on Canada and other parties to the Kyoto Protocol to "further strengthen" their reduction commitments.
If actually implemented, the new target would result in significantly higher greenhouse emissions than the Harper government's previous target, which was already weak and inadequate.
The real story of the government's latest target is that Canadians can't trust Jim Prentice or Stephen Harper on climate change.
The new target would mean that Canada's greenhouse gas emissions target would be about 2.5 per cent above 1990 levels in 2020. The Harper government's previous target would have reduced emissions to 3 per cent below 1990 levels. Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol and committed to reducing emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups say that Canada must adopt science-based targets and reduce emissions by at least 25 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020. Canada's emissions are already 34 per cent higher than the target under the Kyoto Protocol.
The increase of global warming emissions under the Harper government plan will be much worse than it claims. Cabinet documents leaked in December show that the Harper government intends to allow tar sands emissions to increase dramatically. Tar sands emissions are already the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.
When Stephen Harper came to power in 2006, he complained that the outgoing Liberal government had failed to deliver on its global warming promise. But the Harper government has had four years to address climate change, and has done absolutely nothing.
The Copenhagen Accord is a non-binding document that came out of the failure of the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen to adopt a fair, ambitious and binding agreement to reduce the world's greenhouse gas emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Backgrounder
Backgrounder on emission targets prepared by Dave Martin, Climate and Energy coordinator.