The Secretary-General of the United Nations stated that a new report “must sound the death knell for coal and fossil fuels”, raising new questions about the long-term viability of Canada’s climate plan and its traditional energy sector.
The United Nations scientific paper stated that the earth is heating up rapidly due to human activities, and in about ten years, the temperature will exceed the level of warming that world leaders are trying to prevent.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that with increasingly extreme heat waves, droughts, floods and wildfires threatening the world, this landmark study was released on Monday and is equivalent to “humanity’s red code.” ‘”.
Federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson acknowledged that parts of western and northern Canada are warming at three times the global average, and the consequence is the cycle of floods and wildfires in British Columbia and elsewhere.
He said in a statement that the Liberal government has taken “aggressive climate action” through carbon pricing and promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% to 45% by 2030 from 2005 levels.
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Amara Possian, the Canadian campaign director at 350.org, said the report is a “loud horn” and shows that the country’s climate plan is far from meeting the requirements.
She said in a statement: “Elections are coming, and the wildfires triggered by the climate are still raging across the country. The real question is whether our politicians are listening and whether they will stand up and become the climate champions we need.”
The advocacy group (named after the “safe” level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) called for a moratorium on the expansion of fossil fuels and a halt to the expansion of trans-mountain pipelines.
The Petroleum Services Association of Canada tried to suppress any echoes of the death knell.
“In the final analysis, we cannot switch to renewable energy overnight. The world still needs fossil fuels,” Gurpreet Lail, head of the Calgary-based trading group, said in an email.
read more: The UN report says, “Humanity’s Red Code”: Climate change is out of control
Alberta Governor Jason Kenny pointed out that carbon capture technology can help clean oil fields, but believes that the idea of abandoning hydrocarbons is “utopian.”
“Flicking the switch is obviously unrealistic,” he told reporters on Monday. “The cost of human life will be immeasurable.”
The authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report stated that climate change is clearly caused by humans and is “unambiguous”. The forecast for the 21st century is more accurate and warmer than when it was last released in 2013.
Based on reduced carbon emissions, each of the five future scenarios exceeds the stricter of the two thresholds set in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. The world leaders agreed at the time to try to limit the warming to a level above 1.5 degrees Celsius in the late 19th century, because problems have rapidly increased since then. Since then, the world has warmed by nearly 1.1 degrees Celsius.
The 3,949-page report stated that in each case, the world will cross the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming mark in the 2030s, which is earlier than some previous predictions. Data show that climate warming has intensified in recent years.
Canada, like the United States and Australia, is one of the three countries with the largest carbon dioxide emissions per capita in the world.
Eddy Perez from the Climate Action Network said that the report shows that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels “is no room for negotiation at all”.
“This is the only option for a safe and healthy future, and it is still possible. We need to work hard to restore our broken relationship with nature and ourselves; we need to counter any delays in emergency climate action.”
Opposition leaders weighed in on Monday, emphasizing that green work is the way to reduce emissions and stabilize the economy.
Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole avoided the question of whether fossil fuels and coal will ring, but called climate change an “immediate threat” to Canada.
“We will achieve our Paris goals, we will reduce emissions, but we will also let people work,” he told reporters.
O’Toole cites the carbon price policy on fuel announced by Conservative MPs in April, after Conservative MPs spent several years fighting the so-called carbon tax-stating that their climate plan would be under the Paris Agreement commitments Reduce emissions by 30% while supporting more work.
New Democratic Party leader Jagmit Singh accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Justin Trudeau) of easily letting go of the big polluters, referring to the government’s decision in 2018 to relax the proposed carbon price limits for big emitters.
“The price of pollution saves the biggest polluters. People are asking, what’s the point of this?” Singh said.
“The only way out is to ensure that workers are at the core of the solution,” he added, citing building renovations, electric vehicles and public transportation.
According to a report by the Canadian Clean Energy Corporation in June, according to the Federal Climate Plan, by 2030, the number of jobs in the clean energy sector is expected to increase by nearly 50% to 639,200, which coincides with the industry’s 58% increase in GDP.
Green Party leader Anna Mi Paulo called the results of the UN report “frightening” and “sad”, but said she hopes it will strengthen Canadians’ determination to tackle climate change.
“It’s not just altruism or attention to the planet that is driving the European Union, the United States, China, and all other major economies towards a green economy. What drives them forward is the competitive advantage that will give them and will create jobs,” she said. Said in a telephone interview.
Paul also stated that Canada has failed to achieve a single climate goal and that its greenhouse gas emissions have been rising every year since 2015. The Liberal Party’s goal of reducing 45% by 2030 is far from the 60% she had hoped for.
“The primary content of the report is that climate change has arrived and its effects are already visible. The question now is, how bad do we want it to get?”
-Documents from the Associated Press
© 2021 Canadian Press
