Harper's Climate Charade; Barefaced Lies That Canada Will Meet GHG Targets Despite All Evidene
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Now, fortunately, black has been called black – not by environment NGOs or the few journalists still interested in the issue, but by Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development Julia Gelfand, whose office is an offshoot of the Auditor-General’s. Ms. Gelfand has just released an annual report so devastating that one wonders if any minister, let alone the Prime Minister, would have the gall to keep on repeating what can accurately be called a lie.
The 17-per-cent reduction, which Canada agreed to at a conference in Copenhagen in 2009, will not happen. “The evidence is stronger [than in the commissioner’s 2012 report] that the growth in emissions will not be reversed in time and that the target will be missed,” Ms. Gelfand’s report says. The best that might be expected would be a 7 per cent reduction.
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The regulations on coal are weak, because they only apply to new plants (of which few if any will be built) or to existing plants that reach the end of their useful life, which means that companies will string out the lifetime of older plants to avoid the regulations. Regulations on oil and gas, often promised, have been shelved, even though, as the commissioner notes, emissions from this sector will rise faster than from any other. Her description of confusion and failure inside the Environment and Natural Resources departments ranges between farce and tragedy. In fairness to those departments, since the Prime Minister’s Office directs the government, the blame should properly lie there. Mr. Harper’s environment ministers have been embarrassingly inept, but they have been expected to do little on the environmental file except repeat things that are not true.
While the Harper government brazenly brags about its performance, it turns out (as everyone following the issue of climate change has known and said) that provincial actions have accounted for two-thirds of the emissions reductions thus far. The single biggest contribution to lower emissions has been Ontario’s closure of coal-fired plants. When Ottawa brags about overall emissions reductions, it suggests that the federal government has been responsible, which is false.
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/canadas-perpetual-climate-charade/article21032688/
