We're in the climate doghouse, but we can spend our way out

Share

Canada has had a rough ride at the Copenhagen climate-change summit. It is unloved, even despised, by the scientists, the environmental groups and most developing countries. It will leave the summit with a sullied image - the arrogant, rich country that is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The image is both deserved and undeserved. It is undeserved in the sense that Canada's new emissions output target - 20 per cent less than 2006's level by 2020 - is almost identical to the U.S. pledge. And get this: When you dig into the numbers, the drop between 2006 (to use Canada's arbitrary base-year number) and 2020 is roughly the same as the European Union's. Canada is also pumping small fortunes into clean-energy technology.

But the Americans and the Europeans will probably emerge from the summit on Friday as good guys, if not heroes. Not the Canadians.

While time is running out, Canada's sorry fate at the summit is not necessarily sealed. The country has a long and proud history of providing financial and development assistance to poor countries. Perhaps the biggest outstanding issue at the summit is long-term funding - as much as $100-billion (U.S.) a year - to help the developing world fight the effects of climate change. Some rich country needs to write the first cheque. Why not Canada?

Only one man can make that commitment on the spot - Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who arrives in Copenhagen Thursday.

Several delegates, among them John Drexhage of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, thinks a funding commitment would yank Canada's reputation out of the Copenhagen gutter. "To repair its image, Canada needs to put a number on the long-term financing plan," he said.

How did Canada find itself in the dog house in the first place?

Of course, part of the answer is that Canada is in the Kyoto Protocol, the existing international emissions-reduction treaty, and the United States is not. The United States has no treaty to break, while Canada has made a mockery of its Kyoto targets. Don't feel sorry for Canada. When the Liberals ratified Kyoto seven years ago, they knew what they were getting into. When the Conservatives came into office in 2006, they could have triggered Kyoto's withdrawal provision and bailed out of an accord they considered "ill-advised" - Environment Minister Jim Prentice's words yesterday. They didn't and now it's too late.

Canada has made things worse for itself by presenting no plan to achieve the 20-per-cent emissions cut. Will it be done through a national or North American carbon cap-and-trade system, carbon offsets (such as forest preservation), contributions to a national clean-technology fund? The Canadians won't say.

But that's not the main reason the image game is going against Canada at the summit. The real reason is that Canada gives every impression that a new global climate-change treaty, which may or may not replace Kyoto, is a burden it would rather not carry as the planet warms up. "The Canadian government views climate change merely as a cost, not an opportunity," says a climate-change lawyer attending the summit.

Canada's presence at the summit has been surprisingly muted. There is no Canadian pavilion to showcase homegrown clean technology. Canada's Industry Minister, Tony Clement, is not here to talk about "opportunities" presented by moving to a low-carbon economy.

There are almost no Canadian oil executives in Copenhagen and no representatives from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the industry's main lobbying group, even though the Alberta oil sands has been vilified in Copenhagen.

You might think the oil bosses would lunge at the chance to defend themselves by presenting evidence of lower energy and water use per barrel produced. If there is one person from the Canadian oil industry who should be here, it is Rick George, the chief executive officer of oil-sands superstar Suncor. Whether they are in hiding, or whether Mr. Prentice didn't want them around, is an open question; both theories have been floated.

The Americans take a different approach to climate change. Take Gary Locke, the U.S. Commerce Secretary. In a speech in the summit's American pavilion last week, he mentioned several U.S. companies at the forefront of clean-energy technology. He said he wanted to end fuel subsidies because they encourage fossil-fuel consumption and crowd out green-energy investment. His main message was one of opportunity. In the next decades, he said, every industry will have to be rebuilt for a low-carbon future. "We're talking about a new model of economic growth," he said.

In Copenhagen, Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a parade of big-name executives had similar messages. In a summit speech last night, so did Prince Charles. Galen Weston Jr., the boss of Loblaw's, did come to Copenhagen to talk about the opportunities presented by climate change, but he should have been part a bigger Canadian crowd.