Blogs / Hillbilly highway
No sleep till Copenhagen
| 12/11/09
Representatives from countries the world over are in Copenhagen, Denmark for the next week and a half trying to hammer out a comprehensive agreement on curbing greenhouse gas emissions before we’re all completely fucked. If emissions rise past a “tipping point,” we could find ourselves stuck in a positive feedback loop which, scientists agree, will likely send the Earth’s systems catastrophically out of control.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be making his way to Denmark next week, but Canada’s reputation on climate change — personified by Mr. Harper himself — has already preceded itself. In late November, activists and scientists at the Commonwealth summit called for Canada to be excluded from the old boys club completely. Later that week, The Guardian lambasted Canada in an article comparing our stance on climate change to Japan’s position on whaling in international waters. The comparison, I reckon, is quite apt — we’re currently acting not only against world opinion, but also against the probable survival of life on earth itself.
Activists with the Climate Action Network were quick to point this fact out to the world media, handing Canada the first “Fossil of the Day” award for our backward position and utter inaction in the face of global crisis. This in the face of undeniable evidence that the world is changing faster than we’ve ever seen, and that we’re just finishing up the warmest decade on record — ever. Even China — Alberta’s go-to patsy for abandoning Kyoto — is calling U.S., EU and Japanese targets flimsy and “not enough,” pledging themselves to reduce carbon emissions intensity by 40 per cent by 2020. As Mr. Harper has consistently followed the U.S.’s lack of lead when it comes to GHG emissions, China’s criticisms fall upon us as well. At home, protests have disrupted Parliament Hill during the Copenhagen summit and are likely to continue.
Now, I’m sure there may be some yahoos, dimwits and straight up maniacs who choose to doubt the science behind climate change. Hell, some people truly and honestly believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old and that a long dead corpse will one day return from space to bring all his buddies up to the great beyond to live happily forever and ever on some as yet undiscovered gas cloud in a far off corner of the galaxy. These people are not welcome at a table discussing serious business, and neither should so-called climate change “skeptics.”
Canada, with Stephen Harper at the helm, is shitting the bed when it comes to contributing to a better tomorrow. As Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote, “The immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China. It comes from Canada.” Personally, I feel ashamed to read that, but even more ashamed to admit, wholeheartedly, that Monbiot isn’t too far off the mark. Shit, he could even be completely right. Time, of course, will have to tell. However, it’ll be a dark day in Canadian history when we have to own up to our grandchildren that we dropped the ball, big time. A dark day, indeed.