Climate Change Conference Gets Underway in Canada

The United Nations Climate Change Conference began in Montreal on Monday with 8,000 attendees from 189 countries. One of the key issues in this, the eleventh Conference of the Parties (COP 11) and the most important conference since Kyoto in 1997, is the development of a post-Kyoto agreement, especially one that involves the U.S. and other major polluters.

"Canada will want to have some means of assurance in making...sure that whatever commitments are taken in the future that there'll be some sort of commensurate actions on the part of the United States," says John Drexhage, the director of climate change and energy for the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

The Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty on the reduction of greenhouse gasses believed to cause global warming, expires in 2012. The United States has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, arguing it would hurt its economy and also unfairly omits big polluting developing nations such as China.

"I think that the big problem, frankly, has been the decision of the U.S. not to ratify, and it needs to be taken into consideration that Canada ratifying without the U.S. is very much akin to—given our tight trading relationship—it would be almost exactly akin to Netherlands ratifying without [the] EU," adds Drexhage.

"The Kyoto signatories can't move too much further in a more aggressive manner to reduce emissions while their big trading partners are sitting on the sidelines," says Ray Kopp, a senior fellow at Resources for Future, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. "So the continued discussion is going to be how do we get the U.S. and China to engage in this process of emission reduction along with the EU so that the EU can actually undertake more restrictive emission reductions in the future."

Comments by British Prime Minister Tony Blair have shown similar sentiments. In a recent announcement in the British House of Commons, Blair declared his determination in making sure that any future agreements "have got to involve the United States, India and China."

At the first day of the conference, Dr. Harlan Watson, Senior Climate Negotiator at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. representative at the UN conference, continued to defend the position of the U.S. in not joining the Kyoto Protocol and argued that the U.S. is doing more than most countries to protect the Earth's atmosphere, noting that greenhouse gas emissions have dropped 0.8% since George Bush became president.

The United States has been pursuing voluntary efforts in cutting emissions of greenhouse gasses, examples of which include the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate that allows its six member countries (including Australia, China, and India) to set their own emission reduction targets and has no enforcement mechanisms. China, the second largest polluter after the United States, is also unlikely to accept restrictive targets.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report released last month that China and other developing countries will emerge as the world's biggest polluters over the next 25 years, and that "the increase in emissions from China alone will exceed the increase in all the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries and Russia combined."

Kopp says the determining factor on how aggressive the Kyoto parties will be in the next commitment period depends on how the talks on Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits evolve at the conference.

The CDM is a flexible mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. The mechanism makes it easier and cheaper for the developed nations to meet their emission reduction targets by giving credits for carrying out greenhouse gas reduction projects in developing countries.

"One of the things that you are going to see actively talked about during these meetings will be the Clean Development Mechanism and how that needs to be reformed so that projects can be undertaken and credits made available to countries like Canada and Japan and others who want to use those credits to meet their commitments," says Kopp.

Although global warming remains a somewhat controversial topic, many scientists contend that the Earth has never warmed as fast as it has in the past century. The ten hottest years on record have all occurred within the last twenty years, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says, "Most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."

Rising global temperatures could lead to rising sea levels and changing regional climates. It could impact agriculture, cause change in ecosystems, and lead to the spread of disease.

"As a northern country, Canada will feel the impacts of climate change more than most countries," says a report prepared by Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Directorate of Natural Resources Canada.

Environmentalists say that Canada is already impacted by global warming.

"In the Arctic we're seeing permafrost melting in places in the far Arctic where it hasn't melted in ten thousand years,…we're seeing a shorter winter…[and] more severe storms throughout the country," says John Bennett, the executive director of the Climate Action Network of Canada.

A report released by the UN in November revealed that Canada is the sixth-furthest country from meeting its Kyoto targets, which require member nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by approximately six percent from 1990 levels.

At the first day of the UN Conference, Canadian Environment Minister Stéphane Dion noted that Canada has indeed fallen short in meeting its Kyoto commitments but reassured that "Canada is not giving up."