How Canadians Can Lower Their Carbon Footprint and Show The World How It Can Be Done: Part 4: Climate Audit Makes Paris Goals Unreal

March 28, 2018 – In Paris in December of 2015, a blueprint for the planet was accepted by almost every country on the planet. It stated that all the nations of the world were determined to hold global warming to well below 2 Celsius above pre-industrial levels and make every conceivable effort to try and limit the rise to only 1.5 Celsius. It called for the cutting of greenhouse gas emissions globally combined with removal of these agents of global warming from the atmosphere through the use of carbon sinks.

The end result was to be net-zero by the latter part of the 21st century beginning with a significant effort to hinder existing emitters to turn down the volume entering the atmosphere. In other words, we wouldn’t produce any more greenhouse gases than natural and human-engineered processes could handle. It didn’t attempt to suggest we could get to the point where we could create negative emissions and reduce the total volume of atmospheric carbon. That would have been a nice to have addition to the agreement. But so far, in response to Paris, there is no greenhouse gas emitting nation of consequence at pace to reduce its carbon footprint to meet either of the goals established in 2015 within the next ten, twenty, thirty or even fifty years.

Canada’s Auditors General Report is a Statement of Climate Change Inaction

In the latest Canadian Auditors General report entitled, “Perspectives on Climate Change Action in Canada,” it concludes that Canada continues to fail at meeting target milestones for carbon reduction. It highlights key issues in its environmental audit of climate change action and concludes:

• that more than half of Canada’s provinces and territories lack targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (that’s 7 of 12 sub-jurisdictions with environmental ministries).
• that the majority of governments have high-level goals to reduce carbon emissions but no granularity in planning and policy.
• that the majority of governments in Canada lack climate change assessment risk analysis and adaptation plans.
• that there has been limited cooperation and coordination among Canada’s provincial, territorial, and federal government on actions being taken.
• that a number of governments within Canada are failing to report regularly on their progress on climate change.
• that some governments have priced carbon pollution but there remains no commonality in approach.
• that emission targets vary from government to government lending an air of confusion to the entire effort.
• that governments have no consistent policy about using carbon sinks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• that within the federal government only 5 of 19 departments and agencies have done comprehensive assessments of climate change risks within their mandates.
• that there is still no comprehensive analysis of current and future permafrost degradation in the north and the risk it presents to global greenhouse gas emission spikes in the near future.

The Auditors General report is an indictment of my country’s efforts to-date to tackle carbon emissions. And this is happening in a country that pledges full support for the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Where is the coordination?

Where is the monitoring and reporting?

Where are the mitigation and adaptation strategies?

How are Canadians being engaged to understand what lies ahead and how each of us can become participants in fighting carbon emissions?

In this series so far I have written about governments, scientists, and educators and the responsibility that lies with them to create greater awareness in the public space about carbon-driven climate change. An educated public makes better decisions. An educated public can accept policies that may cause short-term pain in pursuit of a better future. An educated public can think past four-year election cycles and recognize the need for longer-term commitments.

So How Does Canada Rate Against Other Nations?

In 2017 carbon emissions went up globally after a three-year lull. There is nothing to indicate that Canada was no better at keeping the lid on carbon emissions than the rest of the planet. In fact, based on a report I shared with you in the last week, Canada’s emissions rose. Clearly, something is very wrong with our collective response to carbon-based global warming.

From a global perspective, many countries since Paris COP21 have announced intentions to regulate carbon or have actually priced the cost of greenhouse gases through taxes or cap-and-trade. Globally, just as in Canada, the approaches taken have been a hodgepodge. There is no uniformity and very little in the way of public buy-in.

Where national and sub-jurisdiction governments have joined with private enterprise (largely utilities and energy companies), to invest in engineered solutions to reduce emissions, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), the prohibitive cost of projects has led to only a limited number of builds. Other than doing without carbon-based energy, or natural carbon sinks, CCS seems to be the only technological fix we have on the books and it is tepidly supported.

In terms of natural carbon sinks, government and private enterprise results have been just as spectacularly unsuccessful with the balance between reforestation and deforestation favouring the latter rather than the former. Yet publicly governments, scientists and educators all have declared that forests are the most reliable land-based form of carbon sink.

In the effort to move away from fossil-fuel generated energy, governments have taken a variety of policy and regulatory approaches to encourage renewable energy. Preferential pricing to developers and subsidies to purchasers have produced some notable successes visible in the growth of wind, and solar projects around the globe. But at the same time, most governments encourage fossil fuel exploration and development and provide subsidies to the energy companies pursuing new sources of carbon-emitting forms of energy.

And governments and utilities around the planet continue to pursue building large-scale energy projects including massive grid distribution infrastructure, a truly misguided effort, rather than investing in distributed power and microgrids which are far more environmentally friendly, produce less wasted energy, and are low to net-zero carbon emitters.

A change in consumer behaviour requires governments to be honest brokers when it comes to climate change and the threat posed by a warming atmosphere. Governments need to implement programs that mandate and encourage consumers to make older homes and buildings nearer to net-zero than any are today. Governments need to be courageous and forthright. Governments need to be selfless. Governments need to lead. And here in Canada, we need to demand of our governments that type of behaviour and leadership if we are to meet our emission reduction targets in the next decade, and establish further reduction targets and plans throughout the remainder of the century.

In the previous installment of this series, I hoped, that by introducing a simple tool, a carbon calculator for Canadians, that some of you might take the opportunity to calculate your carbon scores. It is a good starting point for taking a personal measure of your carbon contribution and a roadmap to reductions.

A final note: In the United States and around the world in the last few weeks, we have witnessed young and old become politicized and motivated around the issue of gun violence after 17 lost their lives in a Southern Florida high school. The “no more BS” signs opposing gun violence and government inaction, carried by thousands at rallies in hundreds of U.S., Canadian, and other locales need to be applied equally to the carbon problem.

More to follow, and please comment on what you have read here.