On Earthgauge radio this week, we’ll be talking about the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline. Hearings of the National Energy Board looking into the pipeline proposal got underway in B.C. this month with over 4000 people scheduled to speak as intervenors. The oil industry in Canada and the federal government are pushing hard to see that the pipeline is built, yet opposition to the project, particularly among First Nations communities along the proposed pipeline route, is fierce. We take a look at the potential environmental impacts of the pipeline, the strategic energy security implications of liquidating tar sands oil, the economics of the project and the political context. Right click here to download the entire show.

We have 3 interviews on our special show today:

• Emma Gilchrist, Communications Director for the Dogwood Initiative
• Energy analyst and geoscientist, David Hughes
• Author and journalist, Murray Dobbin

If constructed, the Northern Gateway pipeline would transport heavy bitumen oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta to the north coast of BC. Although the National Energy Board hearings have just begun, already the federal government has weighed in before the environmental panel has even had a chance to do its work and make a recommendation on whether or not to proceed with the project. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already said the pipeline is in the national interest and must proceed while federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has labelled those opposed to the project, which includes environmentalists, fishermen, ranchers, ordinary citizens and First Nations, as foreign-funded radicals.

So what is this project all about? Well, basically the company Enbridge wants to build two 1200km pipelines – one would take  500,000 barrels a day of tar sands crude across the Rockies to Kitimat on the B.C. coast, where over 200 supertankers a year would take the oil for export to the U.S. and Asia. A second pipeline in the other direction would take a natural gas condensate back to the tar sands, which helps the oil flow through the pipe.

The pipelines would cross hundreds of rivers and streams and pass through a region renowned for its salmon, wolves, bears and other wildlife. It would also help to triple the production of tar sands crude, which is among the dirtiest and most destructive forms of energy, thereby greatly increasing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Not surprisingly, the proposed project has sparked an eruption of opposition among those who see the possibility of an oil spill as a critical threat to the environment and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people. Northern Gateway would have to cross the lands and waters of many BC First Nations, the vast majority of whom are opposed to the project, some maintaining that it must be stopped at almost any cost. In December, 130 aboriginal groups in B.C. said they were joining forces to use “whatever means necessary” to stop the project.

Meanwhile, industry and the Harper government say exploiting Canada’s abundant tar sands is vital for prosperity, particularly in light of a recent decision of US president Barack Obama to delay approval of the equally controversial Keystone XL pipeline which would transport tar sands crude to the Gulf of Mexico. Given this delay, Harper said recently that, “it is particularly essential for this country that we have the capacity to sell our energy products into the growing markets of Asia.”

One thing is for sure – a long and bitter fight lies ahead with some calling it the most significant environmental battle in Canadian history.

We’re taking a hard look at this project on Earthgauge today. First we hear from Emma Gilchrist of the organization Dogwood Initiative who talks about some of the possible environmental impacts of the project and updates us on the progress of the NEB hearings. Then we hear from the respected geologist David Hughes who discusses whether there is even a need for the project from the perspective of Canada’s strategic energy reserves. And finally for the political perspective I speak with the journalist Murray Dobbin who fills us in on how the federal government is manoeuvring to ensure that the project be approved despite all the opposition to it.

We also have our usual segment with Kathy of Ecology Ottawa who updates us on local environmental events and campaigns. I’ve listed a few of the upcoming events below and you can click here to see a complete list with full details.

Contact us at earthgaugeradio ‘at’ gmail.com. Please do get in touch if you have story ideas, a comment on something you’ve heard or want to get involved or contribute to the show. You can also download our podcasts on iTunes. Just type “earthgauge” into the search bar and you’ll find us.

January 31, 2012
City Council Meeting – Environment Committee
When: January 31, 9:30 to 11:30 am
Where: City Hall, Andrew S. Haydon Hall, 110 Laurier Avenue West

February 1, 2012
City Council Meeting – Transportation Committee
When: February 1, 9:30 to 11:30 am
Where: Champlain room, Ottawa City Hall
Phone: 613-580- 2424 ext. 21624

February 1, 2012
The World We Want – An evening with Francis Moore Lappé
USC Canada presents an inspiring evening with the visionary author of the groundbreaking Diet for a Small Planet (1971), Frances Moore Lappé. Based on her new book, EcoMind, Lappé confronts our current myths about markets, food, and environmental issues, challenging us to change the way we think so we can create the world we want.
When: February 1, 7:30 to 9:00 pm
Where: St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, 310 St. Patrick Street

Wednesday February 1 and 8, 2012
Weekly environmental choir rehearsals
Just Voices is Ottawa’s only environmental and social-justice theme choir. They have been singing at events around the capital since 2003. They welcome new members at any time, and prior musical experience is not necessary. For more information, visit www.justvoices.ca.
When: February 1, 7:00 to 9:00 pm
Where: The Bronson Centre, 211 Bronson Ave

February 6, 2012
City Council Meeting – Roads and Cycling Advisory Committee
When: February 6, 7:00 to 9:00 pm
Where: City Hall, Honeywell Room

February 9, 2012
City Council Meeting – Environmental Advisory Committee
When: February 9, 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Where: City Hall, Andrew S. Haydon Hall

February 9, 2012
Green Drinks Ottawa
Green Drinks is an open invitation to anyone interested/working/studying all things environmental.  Come and join us for interesting, and inspiring conversation.  We’re an informal, self-organizing network and meet every second Thursday of the month.  For more information, contact: greendrinksottawa@gmail.com.
When: February 9, 5:30 to 7:30 pm
Where: Fox and Feather Pub & Grill, 283 Elgin street

Bracing For a Transit Fight in Toronto

Written by Mark Brooks Thursday, 19 January 2012

This week’s humiliating budget defeat for Toronto mayor Rob Ford, which reversed $20 million in proposed spending cuts, has put new wind in the sails of those fighting to see improved transit services in Canada’s largest city.

On his first day in office, Mayor Ford fulfilled a campaign promise by announcing his intention to cancel the Transit City project, a plan proposed by former Mayor David Miller and the Toronto Transit Commission in 2007 that focused on improving service to the city’s woefully underserved suburbs. Among other initiatives, Transit City called for the construction of new rapid light rail lines connecting seven areas of the city, as well as new rapid bus transit lines. Upon cancelling the project in December 2010, Mayor Ford announced that the “war on the car” was over. Claiming that light rail transit (LRT) on roadways is a bad idea, he instead proposed an expansion of the existing Toronto subway system, a plan that would serve fewer residents at a much higher cost.

So just what is this transit dust-up all about and why should anyone outside of Toronto even care?

Well, for starters Toronto’s squabbles are emblematic of the transit challenges facing other Canadian cities, such as Vancouver and Calgary, whose populations are growing at rapid rates. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is expected to grow by more than one million residents during the next 10 years. These people will need to get to get around somehow. Yet a recent study found that Torontonians suffer the second worst traffic-related stress of 20 international cities. Toronto’s roads and highways are the most congested in North America and, at 80 minutes, their drivers endure the longest average commute times. As anyone who drives Vancouver’s roads will attest, drivers there do not fare much better. The average commute is now 67 minutes and the situation is getting worse as more and more residents seek cheaper housing prices farther from the city centre.

What is particularly interesting about the Toronto transit squabble is how Mayor Ford has managed, inadvertently, to galvanize the many groups lobbying for better transit in the GTA. By opting for a “my way or the highway” approach to transit, he brazenly picked a fight that he might well lose. Although Transit City certainly had its shortcomings, Ford’s subway plan just doesn’t make sense on so many levels.

For starters, subway lines cost, on average, 3 to 6 times more than LRT lines. Ford’s plan to build an eight-kilometer stretch of subway is estimated to cost around $400-million per kilometer (including new stations). In contrast, building LRT along the same stretch would cost about $90-million per kilometer. And instead of at least 3 new LRT lines, Toronto residents would see one, shorter subway line that would still leave much of the city’s suburban areas underserved. So for these unlucky folks, Ford planned to provide more buses (at a higher cost and lower reliability that LRT). $1.3 billion was committed to Transit City and $137 million of that amount has already been spent. Construction is already underway on one LRT line and there are expected to be millions of dollars in cancellation fees for the various contracts already tendered. All this from a mayor who ostensibly purports to be a deficit slayer.

Ford’s plan just seemed like “an obviously wrong decision to many people,” Joe Drew of Save Transit City and CodeRedTO.com told me. “When you see a plan that was going to expand rapid transit to a significant part of the community be killed for capricious reasons, it becomes important to many people to fix this.” And fix it they are, much to Mayor Ford’s chagrin. Many groups including TTC Riders, the Toronto Environmental Alliance and others have rallied around the campaign to save Transit City or, at the very least, to oppose Ford’s plan to kill it and replace it with a nonsensical new subway line.

“Even for those city councilors who don’t care about transit, they do care about taxpayers money,” says Drew.  That’s why Toronto’s previous city council chose LRT as the foundation of its plan — because hands down it provides the best value for money.

As for the legitimate concerns about Transit City’s impacts on traffic, Drew says his organization is not calling for a full reinstatement of the original plan as it was. “What we are saying is that Ford’s plan is even worse so maybe we can build a plan that is better than both current options. There is room for compromise and consensus on this. It is not a matter of one plan or the other.”

Now that Mayor Ford has been humbled by his recent budget defeat, perhaps he will be more willing to listen to his detractors. After all, Ford can’t spend the city’s money without the approval of city council. Drew says this is all likely to come to a head over the next month or so when a request for further funding for Ford’s subway proposal comes to council. Buoyed by their budget victory, many councilors are likely to be even more skeptical of the mayor’s proposal.

As for other cities watching this debacle from the sidelines, we can all thank Toronto for providing us with a textbook lesson in how not to deal with transit planning in Canada’s growing urban centres.

On Earthgauge radio this week, we’ll be talking about forest conservation. 2011 was the United Nations International Year of Forests so now that the year has passed, we are taking stock to reflect on the state of forests both here in Canada and around the world. Right click here to download the entire program.

We have 3 interviews on our special show today:

• Will Turner, VP of Conservation Priorities and Outreach for Conservation International
• Tenille Bonogoure, publisher of Alternatives Journal
• Ken Wu, co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance

The UN said the promotion of 2011 as a special Year of the Forest was meant to raise awareness of sustainable management, conservation and development of all types of forests. Why are forests so important? Will Turner explains the importance of forests in considerable detail in our interview but as a primer, according to the World Bank, more than 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods. Over 40% of the world’s oxygen is produced by rainforests. 80% of terrestrial biodiversity is found in forests and as we lose them, it becomes increasingly difficult to solve problems such as reducing poverty and limiting climate change impacts. Forests also provide food, medicine, shelter, jobs to name just a few benefits. It is said that more than one quarter of modern medicines originate from tropical forest plants worth $108 billion annually. Yet the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that every year 130,000 km2 of the world’s forests are lost due to deforestation.

So now that the 2011 Year of the Forest has passed, just how are we doing? Well, to help answer this question I spoke with Will Turner who is is VP of Conservation Priorities and Outreach for the environmental NGO Conservation International based in Arlington Virginia. CI is an environmental organization that has identified the 10 most threatened global forest hotspots. To kick off the program today, Will talks to us about these hotspots and discusses the state of the world’s forests more generally.

For Canadian perspectives on forestry conservation, we hear from Tenille Bonogoure who is the publisher of Alternatives Journal. She wrote an article in this month’s edition of the magazine on the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, which was a 3-year deal negotiated in 2010 between forest companies and environmental organizations. Tenille gives us an update on the agreement now that we’re halfway through the deal. Finally, I talk with Ken Wu who is the co-founder of a new B.C. organization called Ancient Forest Alliance. He has some very interesting things to say about forest conservation campaigns both in BC and in Canada.

Also on today’s show, we’ll be starting a new, regular segment in which we’ll hear from the local environmental organization Ecology Ottawa about some of the work they’re doing on local environmental initiatives and some upcoming environmental events around town. I’ve listed a few of the upcoming events below and you can click here to see a complete list with full details.

Contact us at earthgaugeradio ‘at’ gmail.com. Please do get in touch if you have story ideas, a comment on something you’ve heard or want to get involved or contribute to the show. You can also download our podcasts on iTunes. Just type “earthgauge” into the search bar and you’ll find us.

Upcoming environmental events in Ottawa (see full list here)

Meeting – City of Ottawa Environmental Advisory Committee
Meeting Date: Thursday 12 January 2012
Meeting Location: Andrew S. Haydon Hall
Meeting Time: 18:30
Contact: Joël Monfils 613-580-2424 ext 26837, Joel.Monfils@ottawa.ca

Green Drinks Ottawa
Thursday January 12th, 2012 @ 5:30 pm
Location: Fox @ Feather Pub & Grill, 283 Elgin Street
Green Drinks is an open invitation to anyone interested/working/studying all things environmental.  Come and join us for interesting, and inspiring conversation.  We’re an informal, self-organizing network and meet every second Thursday of the month.  For more information, contact: greendrinksottawa@gmail.com

Building Community Power Meeting in Orleans
Thursday January 12th, from 6:30 – 8:00pm
Orleans United Church, Lounge, 1111 Orleans Blvd. (entrance at rear)
We will discuss actions we can take to improve the environment in Orleans: renewable including solar energy, energy efficiency, and transportation. Please RSVP to: rocio.ortega.rolando@gmail.com and feel free to spread the word and invite other people interested in making Ottawa the green capital of Canada. For more information please contact: Janice Ashworth, Community Organizer: janice.ashworth@ecologyottawa.ca

Surviving Progress at the Bytowne
Sunday January 15th – Wednesday January 18th, 2012 (see Bytowne website for show times)
325 Rideau St
This film explores the concepts of progress in our modern world and the idea of progress traps. It explores technology, economics, consumption, and the environment. For more information visit: http://www.survivingprogress.com

City Council Meeting – Ottawa Forests and Greenspace Advisory Committee
Meeting Date: Monday 23 January 2012
Meeting Location: Colonel By Room
Meeting Time: 18:30
Contact: Jodi Collins 613-580-2424 ext. 15899, Jodi.Collins@ottawa.ca

Transition Ottawa Peak Oil Discussion Group
Tuesday January 24th, 2012
Montgomery Legion, 330 Kent street (downstairs)
Meet nearby advocates for peak oil awareness. Come to our informational monthly discussion group meeting to discuss ideas and actions on how to survive the consequences of the inevitable decline in oil production and economic collapse. Please RSVP to ensure the meeting is not cancelled. To RSVP or for more information please visit (http://transitionottawa.ning.com/group/peakoildiscussiongroup) or contact the moderator, Ron at 613-852-5063, ron@firstgatedreamer.com

Click the audio player to listen to the latest edition of Earthgauge radio, which is a bi-weekly broadcast every other Thursday morning from 7-8 AM on CKCU 93.1 FM in Ottawa. You can also right click here to download the show.

On Earthgauge this week, we’re talking about environmental education and environmental health:

• Tony Dekker of the Great Lake Swimmers
• Geoff Green, founder of the environmental education organization Students on Ice
  
• Author, activist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber

First up, it’s snow, ice and the ends of the Earth. The environmental education organization Students on Ice has just departed on an Antarctic expedition with 60 high school students and an international team of scientists, educators, journalists, artists, leaders and polar experts. Among the participants is Tony Dekker, singer/songwriter for the Juno-nominated band Great Lake Swimmers.

I talked to Tony about his role on the expedition and why he wanted to take part. I also speak with Geoff Green, the SOI founder, about the work of his organization and what he hopes to achieve. This program, now in its tenth year, has taken over 1,800 students, teachers and scientists from around the world on expeditions to the Arctic and the Antarctic. The goal is to give the world’s youth a heightened understanding and respect for the planet’s global ecosystem, and the inspiration to protect it. Could part of the solution to the environmental crisis rest ultimately in better environmental education programs for our youth?

Finally, as this is the final show of 2011, I replay one of the most important  interviews I did this year. It was with environmental health activist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber. Her message is one that all of us should hear.

Steingraber is an inspirational author, activist, poet, scientist and cancer survivor. She is an internationally recognized authority on the environmental links to cancer and human health who has been compared to the pioneering environmental health activist Rachel Carson. Steingraber’s most recent book is called Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis, which Naomi Wolf said “could be the most important and inspiring parenting book ever written.”

Steingraber writes weekly environmental essays for the Huffington Post and now a new documentary film has been produced based on her groundbreaking book, Living Downstream. She also contributed an article to a recent edition of Alternatives Journal called Coal, Oil and Cancer, in which she explains how fossil fuels are not only causing climate change, they are also causing cancer.

Please get in touch if you have any comments, suggestions or if you want to get involved or contribute to the show. Contact me at earthgaugeradio ‘at’ gmail.com.

The environmental education organization Students on Ice recently departed on an Antarctic expedition with 60 high school students and an international team of scientists, educators, journalists, artists, leaders and polar experts. Among the participants is Tony Dekker, singer/songwriter for the Juno-nominated band Great Lake Swimmers.

Just before he left for Antarctica, I talked to Tony about his role on the expedition, why he wanted to take part and, as a musician, how environmental issues influence his songwriting. The Students on Ice program, now in its tenth year, has taken over 1,800 students, teachers and scientists from around the world on expeditions to the Arctic and the Antarctic. The goal is to give the world’s youth a heightened understanding and respect for the planet’s global ecosystem, and the inspiration to protect it.

Click the audio player above to hear the interview or right click here to download.

Click here to read the article on The Tyee web site. Here’s an excerpt:

How do we reconcile what science is telling us about the link between repeated head trauma and CTE with the fact that, almost to a man, the NHL’s fighters say their jobs are worth the risk? Understanding this proclivity to accept serious, perhaps fatal, risks could shed some light on another issue that was debated last month in Durban, South Africa under the auspices of the United Nations climate change summit (COP 17).

Climate science has evolved considerably over the last 20 years to the point that we are now virtually certain that humans, through the emissions of greenhouse gases, are causing climate change. We also know that the impacts of climate change are likely to be very serious if nothing is done to reign in global emissions dramatically. Even the International Energy Agency, hardly an environmental advocacy group, recently warned that the “door is closing” to avert catastrophic climate change.


Yet despite years of repeated, urgent warnings from the scientific community, global emissions are up 49 per cent since 1990 and no new deal emerged out of Durban to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol.


For the most part, the public and the media recognize and acknowledge the risks of continuing to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, yet we have thus far been unwilling to accept or support any substantive economic measures that might impact us personally. As with fighting in hockey, we know climate change might cause serious problems, even death for some, but as the current system is our meal ticket, it’s worth the price.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 7 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Click the audio player to listen to the latest edition of Earthgauge radio, which is a bi-weekly broadcast every other Thursday morning from 7-8 AM on CKCU 93.1 FM in Ottawa. You can also right click here to download the show.

On Earthgauge this week, it’s our holiday season special show. Huge amounts of waste are produced during the holiday season, more than any other time of year. I talk with Paula Richardson of the Canadian Hunger Foundation about their Gifts That Matter campaign. We also hear from Trevor Hache of Ecology Ottawa about the City of Ottawa’s plans to deal with its growing waste problem by signing a long-term contract with Plasco Energy. Also an update from journalist Felix Von Geyer on the recently concluded climate summit in Durban, South Africa and the Canadian government’s announcement that it is officially bailing on the Kyoto Protocol. Way to go Canada!

During the holidays, many of us race around frantically shopping to find something special for everyone on our list and sometimes spending a heck of a lot of money doing it. On the other hand, we have all received gifts that we don’t like or want. And who among us has not looked at all those Christmas gifts and wondered “where the heck is this all going to go?”. All the packaging, the gift wrap, the consumption, the shameful excess in a world of poverty – there is no other time of year like it.

Here are a few facts from ecofriendlyplanet.com (apologies that these are US stats as I couldn’t locate similar figures for Canada but I’m sure we would see similar numbers here):

• Each year, 50 million Christmas trees are purchased in the U.S. Of those, about 30 million go to the landfill. (Environmental News Network).

• 2.65 billion Christmas cards are sold each year in the States, which means 200,000 trees will be cut down to make holiday cards just in the U.S. alone

• Wrapping paper and shopping bags account for about 4 million tons of trash each year in the U.S. Due to the materials in wrapping paper and ribbon such as dyes, laminates, plastic and so on, these products typically can’t be recycled.

• About 40% of all battery sales occur during the holiday season, which if improperly discarded can cause mercury pollution.

Meanwhile the holiday season has become an incredibly stressful time for many people instead of being a time of peace and relaxation amidst a busy life. Too many people have come to dread the approach of the holidays, a season that should be the most relaxed, intimate and joyful time of the year.

A few more stats to throw out at you: in the US the material standard of living has more than doubled since the 1950s yet levels of reported happiness are either unchanged or even slightly lower. According to the Worldwatch Institute, North Americans have used more natural resources since the end of World War II than all of humanity used in all the time before.

So, isn’t there a better way to celebrate the holidays? More and more people seem to think so and they are hungry for alternatives. We are increasingly seeing folks buying fewer or simpler gifts, making their own presents or even giving gifts to charity in a person’s name. Some have limited their holiday spending to $100 maximum while others have foregone gift giving altogether in favour of spending time together or giving something that will not just get stuffed away in a closet somewhere – maybe theatre or movie tickets, gifts of food or a restaurant gift certificate.

Throughout our holiday show today, you’ll hear some clips courtesy of the Metro Vancouver holiday garbage campaign. Folks out there in BC are trying to get people to rethink gift giving around Christmas time and they are suggesting ways to reduce waste so they’ve produced some funny and informative online videos that we will check out.

Feel free to add comments, suggestions or resources that could help people enjoy a more meaningful and less wasteful holiday season this year.

Please do get in touch if you have something you want to say or if you want to get involved or contribute to the show. Contact me at earthgaugeradio ‘at’ gmail.com.

My latest article, reprinted below, examines the negotiating position the Canadian government has adopted at the ongoing Durban climate change summit and in international climate negotiations more generally. You can read it here in full on the CSC website.

Harper’s Climate Death-Wish:
Withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol only the latest effort to derail climate change action

Amidst the ongoing circus that constitutes the United Nations climate change summit (COP 17) currently underway in Durban, South Africa, Canada has once again distinguished itself as the country most hostile to virtually any serious international effort to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Canada has long been considered a climate change pariah by the international community. We were the only signatory to the Kyoto Protocol to simply ignore its responsibilities following ratification and our country’s total emissions are now more than 34 per cent above our Kyoto targets. Not only did the previous Liberal government fail to do anything to meet its Kyoto obligations, in recent years the government of Stephen Harper has gone a step further, becoming increasingly obdurate in its efforts to deliberately obstruct the progress of international climate talks.

Why the antipathy of the Harper government toward limits to carbon emissions? Well, as you might expect, the tar sands are one factor. Tar sands reserves are now valued at a stunning $14 trillion and oil companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in exploiting the resource, money that could boost federal tax revenues considerably.

This is only part of the story however.

Harper has long maintained his government does not support Kyoto because it does not include all of the world’s major emitters such as the United States, China and India. Their oft-repeated refrain is that Canada is a small player, contributing only 2 per cent to global emissions and, as Harper once stated, if emissions from emerging economies are not controlled, “whatever we do in the developed world will have no impact on climate change.”

Besides the fact that we are only in the first Kyoto commitment period and that subsequent phases were intended to include all major emitters, what are we to make of Canada’s Environment-minister-turned-big-oil-lobbyist, Peter Kent, saying on Monday that Canada will not renew its commitment to Kyoto, even if doing so would mean China would agree to firm targets to cut its own greenhouse gases? Worse, speculation is that sometime before Christmas when the House of Commons is not in session and the public is paying little attention, the government will announce Canada’s complete withdrawal from Kyoto. In Durban, Canada is rumoured to be encouraging other countries to follow its lead in rejecting Kyoto.

Although it is technically permitted under Kyoto’s terms, withdrawal from a legally binding, multilateral environmental agreement (MEA) is almost unheard of and it is not entirely clear at this stage what the ramifications of such a move might be for future MEAs. Withdrawal may mean that Canada successfully evades responsibility for the commitments that it undertook in Kyoto but why would any nation believe that Canada will deliver on any commitments we make in the future? And what is to stop other countries withdrawing from other conventions that are no longer to their liking?

This is not to say that Kyoto is without its flaws. But it was a tentative first step by the international community to try to wrestle with a climate change problem that requires concerted international action and is quickly spiraling out of control. Any future treaty would certainly require improvements but Canada is effectively – and almost single-handedly – killing any chance of negotiating a successor to Kyoto before 2020.

So after Durban we are left with nothing but the hastily negotiated and non-binding Copenhagen Accord of 2009, an agreement that our government claims still to support. This agreement calls for the increase in average global temperatures to be limited to two degrees Celsius (2 C) above pre-industrial levels, as many scientists believe that beyond this point, we may cross a climate threshold into potentially catastrophic and unmanageable runaway warming. Yet for several reasons, Copenhagen is also doomed to fail.

First, voluntary commitments by the countries that have so far signed the agreement would leave the world heading for warming of over 3 C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Second, many feel that the 2 C target is itself simply too high. An average global increase of 2 C means some regions in the developing south — much of Africa, for instance — will be subject to a 3.5 C or even 4 C increase. This, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has said, “is to condemn Africa to incineration and no modern development.”

Finally, when you crunch the numbers, it becomes clear that accepting the 2 degree limit globally would mean a dramatic reduction in global emissions in the short term. Yet by 2020, tar sands emissions are expected to triple from their 2005 levels.  It would be very difficult for Canada to reconcile any expanding tar sands production with such sharp global declines in carbon emissions. With the economies of China and India expanding at a rapid rate, there simply is not enough atmospheric space available for a tar sands industry that already accounts for a whopping 6.5% of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Industrialized countries have already emitted roughly 75 per cent of total historical greenhouse gas emissions. By asking poorer countries to bind themselves to diminishing emissions budgets before we have even attempted to meet our own targets, Canada is contributing to perhaps the single biggest impediment to progress in international climate negotiations. For developing countries, acquiescing to such a demand would be “like jumping out of a plane and being assured that you are going to get a parachute on the way down,” as the former Executive Secretary of the UN climate negotiations, Yvo De Boer, said. Why would China and India ever agree to such a deal?

Very few would deny the fact that developing countries will have to rein in their carbon emissions if we are to have any chance of solving the climate crisis but if countries like Canada are unwilling to make deep cuts quickly, it’s very difficult for poor countries to see how they can reconcile their development aspirations with the atmospheric limits of climate stabilization at 2 C of warming. Today, the only proven routes out of poverty still involve an expanded use of energy and, consequently, a seemingly inevitable increase in fossil fuel use and carbon emissions — unless more expensive alternative energies can rapidly be deployed.

So here we find ourselves at what may be an insurmountable political impasse created by sheer self-interest and apparent egotism. “Western nations are engaged in a lose-lose game of chicken with developing nations,” wrote Naomi Klein in Rolling Stone following the Cophenhagen Summit. And in the meantime, the climate will not wait for us to get our act together. As emissions rise, the climate will continue to change.

If even a 2-degree target is out of reach, where does this leave us? The answer is not pretty. In a recently published, must-read article called Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world, Kevin Anderson, a professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester, explains why a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees would be extremely dangerous. In fact, he says “a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable.” According to the International Energy Agency, we’re currently on course for a 6 degrees C temperature rise.

Viewed in these stark terms, I cannot help but wonder if future generations will one day judge the actions of our political “leaders” such as Harper and Kent – who in the face of all the scientific evidence, continued to value increasing tar sands production in Canada over climatic stability – as crimes against humanity.