Lisa Fox

The Sustainability Files
This week there are over 100 heads of state or government in attendance, and over 15 thousand participants, in the Copenhagen Conference in Denmark. Their mission is to carve out a new commitment to the reduction of greenhouse gas and effective methods to mitigate the impact of climate change.

The Kyoto agreement was the first legally binding treaty for industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions through both legislative frameworks and through investments in green technologies.

Copenhagen offers an opportunity to strengthen the commitments and for us here in Canada, and perhaps an opportunity to restore our international reputation.

Canada contributes about two per cent  of the global green house gas emissions, and with our province contributing about 75 per cent of that two per cent,  Alberta is very engaged in the discussion about setting targets that could potentially affect our “bottom line.” The largest greenhouse gas producing sectors in Canada are energy (coal fired electricity production) and transportation (trucks and cars).

The Harper government has already stated that it would not try to meet our commitment under Kyoto (six per cent  below 1990 by 2012), and as a result of our growing carbon economy we are already 33 per cent  above this target in the transportation sector alone!

Considering the weight of our dependence on the export market to the US, it would be very prudent for our government to follow the lead of President Obama and the U.S. on the commitments made leading up to and during the Copenhagen talks.

In a speech given to business leaders in Montreal last week, Jim Prentice, Minister of Environment, was adamant that Canada will need to take its cues from Obama. “If we do more than the US, we will suffer economic pain for no real environmental gain — economic pain that could impede our ability to invest in new, clean technologies and other innovative solutions to climate change,” Prentice said. “But, if we do less we will risk facing new border barriers into the American market.”

Our Minister of the  Environment is in Copenhagen showing off our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for our Canadian fleet with tighter regulations in all new vehicles through the “Technology Action Plan for Advanced Vehicles.” In addition to the launch of our carbon capture and storage initiatives, our government seems to be tackling the emission reduction challenge with some proactive Band-Aids that might just be enough for the international community to keep Canada in the Commonwealth.

With a tabled commitment from Obama to cut emissions by 17 per cent  from 2005 levels by 2020 — I am keen to see how our government will ante-up to the challenge. What are the mechanisms that would be used by our government to get there?

In Copenhagen this week there are several “side talks” with the international community intended to broaden the conversation about how to build the momentum of innovative green technologies that can move us away from a carbon-intense future.

If there is one thing that Copenhagen has achieved it is the realization that we are now entering an era where there is a global call for eliminating pollution through real commitments from industrialized nations. How we get there will require investments in innovative green technologies and an abrupt shift away from our dependence on carbon intense productivity.

Lisa Fox, a mother of thrree, is the founder and director of a local not-for-profit environmental consulting firm.

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One Response to “Alberta’s hope in Copenhagen”

1. FACLC says:

   December 19, 2009 at 6:09 pm

   Whoa whoa whoa… Copenhagen had nothing to do with “eliminating pollution”. This was all about something called “climate change”, which apparently was fully benign until that evil President Nixon came along and ruined it.

   There are serious efforts by individuals, governments, and companies around the world to curb pollution (which in industry has another, even less appealing name: waste). Several of these efforts may indeed increase output of CO2 compared to the dirty old ways of doing so, but in the end it comes with an actual change to actual environmental quality.

   And nobody in Copenhagen will have done a thing to support it.