I stole this article. This article was available for reposting; so, I copied it and am presenting it here for you. I have no shame in reposting this word for word. Dave Martin of Greenpeace did an excellent job of turning the talks into written word that condemns Canada's performance. I am absolutely appalled at my country's standing in the Colossal Fossil Awards held in Poznan, Poland.
Not only did we win the Colossal Fossil Award at the climate change talks for doing more than any other country to impede progress; but, we also managed to garner 10 daily fossil awards. Wow!! Is there no end to the lengths we'll go to win. But, wait...it gets better. You'd think after all this it just couldn't get any better; but, it does. We almost had last place in our grip; but, at the last moment, total success slipped from our grasp. We had to settle for 56th in a field of 57 countries on the international 2009 Climate Change Performance Index. Oh well, maybe next year...
Meanwhile, the article below is an amazing read. If you're Canadian, you'll be as embarrassed as I am.
December 22nd, 2008
Canada deserves ‘Colossal Fossil’ award
Dave Martin
[the following was posted on the Toronto Star web site, December 20, 2008]
As a non-governmental delegate to the United Nations climate change conference in Poznan, Poland, I was embarrassed to be Canadian. It was troubling that in the eyes of many of the 12,000 delegates, Stephen Harper has now replaced George W. Bush on the international stage as one of world’s worst climate change culprits.
Poznan was a crucial negotiation on the road to Copenhagen, where a momentous decision will be made in December 2009 on whether to extend and strengthen the Kyoto Protocol past 2012. Many delegates hoped that there would at least be a draft negotiating text coming out of Poznan, but thanks to Canada and its climate change cronies, the best we can hope for is to have text by June of next year.
Conference delegates were scratching their heads and wondering how Canada went from being a progressive force at the 2005 climate conference in Montreal, to being chosen for the second year in a row, by more than 400 non-governmental groups from around the world, as the most obstructive country at the negotiations. The answer is simple –Stephen Harper took power in January 2006.
Canada won 10 tongue-in-cheek “Fossil of the Day” awards during the two-week conference for being the country that did the most to block progress on a climate deal. This was enough to earn the grand prize of shame known as the “Colossal Fossil.”
There’s no doubt that Alberta’s tar sands are behind the government’s reluctance to get serious about global warming. Just before leaving Canada for the Poznan climate conference, Environment Minister Jim Prentice reassured an Alberta business audience, saying, “We will not aggravate an already weakening economy in the name of environmental progress. … Here in Alberta … it is understood that when we speak of environmental policy, we also speak of energy policy. And when we speak of energy policy, we speak of economic policy.”
So it came as no surprise that one of Canada’s first fossil awards was for arguing that emissions from oil and gas exports (including tar sands) should not be counted as part of our reduction target. The tar sands are Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Since the Kyoto Protocol was first approved in 1997, the science of climate change has become undeniable. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) demolished the few remaining false arguments of climate change deniers, and has confirmed that the global warming Armageddon is under way.
Millions of people are at risk. Arctic sea ice is melting 50 years earlier than anticipated; the world’s glaciers are disappearing; coral reefs are dying; devastating droughts and violent storms are rampant; forest fires and logging are destroying the last great forests; and loss of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could see ocean levels rise more than 10 metres. This is not science fiction – it’s science fact.
Canada is the only country to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol and then wilfully ignored it – the country is now 30 per cent over our Kyoto target. At the Poznan conference, Canada continued to misrepresent its national target, hiding the fact that its “20 per cent reduction by 2020″ is based on 2006 levels, which is less than a 3 per cent reduction from the United Nations 1990 base year. With this pathetically weak target, Canada will not even reach its Kyoto target by 2020 (our legal obligation was a 6 per cent reduction by 2012).
Prentice claims Canada was a “constructive player” in Poznan, but Canada won a fossil award by opposing strengthened support for 25 to 40 per cent reductions by industrial countries by 2020. Prentice justified Canada’s position by arguing that the economy and environment have to be “balanced.”
Prentice also stated all countries have to make “an equality of effort,” and that we need a “symmetry of comparable efforts” from the United States, China and India. Conference delegates saw this as throwing a wrench into the works, and Canada won another fossil award. It is widely accepted that developing countries will take action once industrial countries have demonstrated a strong commitment.
To our embarrassment, Canada justified its poor performance in fighting greenhouse gas emissions by noting that the country is large and cold. This ignored the point that targets are set on historical levels, and Canada is not any larger or colder than it was in 1990. In fact, temperatures have increased, due to something called global warming. Yet another fossil award!
Prentice and chief Canadian negotiator Michael Martin deny that Canada blocked progress on negotiations in Poznan, but the simple fact is that Canada was a big part of the problem. It is shear hypocrisy for Jim Prentice to suggest that climate change is a “priority” for the Tories.
If the world is going strengthen and extend the Kyoto Protocol, we will have to have an agreement at the annual UN climate change conference that will be held in Copenhagen in December 2009. Time is running out.
Dave Martin is Climate and Energy Co-ordinator for Greenpeace Canada. He attended the United Nations climate conference in Poznan, Poland.
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