Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Nov 28 2005 (IPS) — Canada is host and leader of the final push to put the Kyoto Protocol into action through talks on much deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions at a major U.N. meeting in Montreal this week.

However, Canada finds itself in the embarrassing position of having its emissions soar 24.2 percent from 1990 to 2003, according to a U.N. report released this month. It showed that emissions of heat-trapping gases by developed nations fell by an average of 5.9 percent, led by German and British emissions declines of 18.2 and 13.3 percent, respectively.

Surprisingly, Canada’s 24.2 percent increase was well ahead of the U.S. increase of 13.3 percent, despite the fact that the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol. It also means that in order for Canada to meet its Kyoto commitments in 2008, it will need a 35 percent overall reduction in emissions.

“Despite a strong public commitment to Kyoto, Canada’s inaction undermines its credibility,” says Dale Marshall, a climate change policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation, a Canadian environmental NGO.

“Other countries are questioning Canada’s leadership on climate change,” Marshall said.

Canada is hosting the eleventh session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the first Meeting of the Parties under the Kyoto Protocol from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9 in Montreal.

Considered the most important climate meeting since Kyoto in 1997, the Montreal meetings are being held to implement the first emissions reduction targets under the Protocol and to start talks on a new process for deeper cuts after 2012.

The Kyoto Protocol took effect in February, when Russia enacted the treaty into law.

But Kyoto was just the start, and much deeper cuts will be needed if the world is to avoid dangerous and unpredictable climate change, says Marshall – and many other environmental groups agree.

“The latest science is saying that more than a two-degree C rise in global temperatures runs the risk of reaching tipping points with potentially catastrophic consequences,” said Matthew Bramley of the Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental NGO that released a report last week detailing why and how deep emissions cuts can be achieved.

Global average temperatures have risen about 0.7 degrees C in the past 100 years, but the pace is rapidly accelerating. The European Union has also endorsed the two-degree C limit. Because the warming has a greater impact on the Northern hemisphere, that limit will almost certainly mean temperatures that are an ice-melting four to six degrees warmer in northern Canada.

Canada needs to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, Bramley told IPS. “Anything less, and Canada will fail to pull its weight internationally,” he said.

All industrialised countries will need to make similar reductions, he added.

But rather than Kyoto-like mandatory cuts in emissions, the early signals from various delegations in Montreal indicate they favour investments in new technologies and adaptation and voluntary reduction agreements.

Deep cuts in emissions on the order of 60 to 80 percent by 2050 are becoming widely understood as necessary by many countries, agrees Alex Manson, director general of the Climate Change Bureau of Environment Canada.

But first Canada has a major challenge in meeting its 1997 Kyoto commitments, when it agreed to reduce its annual emissions to a level six percent below 1990 levels over the period 2008-2012.

Canada’s new role in recent years as the biggest supplier of foreign oil to the United States is behind much of the GHG increase, Manson explained in an interview. At 2.1 million barrels per day, Canada now supplies about 10 percent of the U.S. daily consumption.

More than half of Canada’s oil now comes from tar sands or oil sands. The extraction process requires the stripping of the soil and rock from hundreds of thousands of acres of land and then boiling the tar or bitumen out of the material with hot water.

It is an expensive and energy-intensive process that generates 25 percent more GHG to deliver a barrel of oil to the United States from the tar sands than one barrel from Saudi Arabia.

Multi-billion-dollar expansion of the oil sand sector is planned to meet continued U.S. oil needs, as well as for export to other oil-hungry countries like Japan and China. That will drive GHG emissions even higher.

Early this year, Canada announced a 10-billion-dollar plan to meet its Kyoto commitments. But “Project Green” critics say it places the burden for reductions on Canadian taxpayers.

Large GHG emitters like the oil and gas industry account for about half of the country’s emissions, but their reduction target is set at only 12 percent of the total needed.

“The plan needs a lot of work, not least of which is higher emissions targets,” said Marshall.

Project Green acknowledges Canada’s unwillingness to cut domestic emissions and allocates billions of dollars to buy what are called carbon offsets or carbon credits. For example, under Kyoto, Canada can reforest parts of Costa Rica, earning credits to offset some of its emissions at home.

That could cost Canadians between one and three billion dollars annually to make up the estimated domestic shortfall – a shortfall that could easily grow if the many voluntary reduction programmes do not work as well as the government hopes, says Marshall.

Spending billions to buy credits overseas will not only erode the strong public support for Kyoto, it does little to help Canada transform its economy so it can make the necessary deep cuts in coming decades, he says.

Transformative change of the Canadian economy will be needed, agrees Manson.

New technologies that capture carbon dioxide from coal plants and other sources and pump them deep underground will be a necessary to be able to make deep cuts in emissions, he said.

“In the future, Canada, like everyone else, will have to emit 15 percent (fewer) of the GHGs than today.” The challenge is how to do that and have a gross domestic product that is comparable to what the country has now, he said.