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From our inbox to you From The David Suzuki Foundation, Canada’s Climate Action Plan and the UN Climate Talks November 30/15

SGC Admin: From our inbox to you From The David Suzuki Foundation on The new Canadian Government & Climate Change Action…

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New government faces climate challenges and opportunities
Our new government appears to be taking climate change seriously. With the UN climate talks starting in Paris on November 30, Canada can play an important role in reducing greenhouse gases at home and helping others around the world do likewise. U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL oilsands pipeline reinforces the fact that we can’t continue burning fossil fuels at current rates.

Although Canada’s government is heading to Paris without a strong plan, it has indicated it’s ready to represent Canadians’ interests. One of the first encouraging signs is the new cabinet.

In the reduced, 30-member cabinet, equally divided between women and men, the minister of environment’s title has been expanded to include climate change, and we now have a minister of science and a minister of innovation, science and economic development.

I and others have been warning about global warming and its consequences for decades. I spoke to science writer Isaac Asimov about it in 1977 on CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks. In 1989, The Nature of Things did its first global warming program and I hosted the five-part radio series, It’s a Matter of Survival, in part about climate change. The David Suzuki Foundation has worked hard over its 25-year history to inform people about climate change and to research solutions, recently through the Trottier Energy Futures Project.

The UN climate conference, just weeks away, presents an immediate challenge for the government, but Canada is in an ideal position to make positive contributions. Besides the new minister of environment and climate change and the prime minister, a cabinet committee on environment, climate change and energy will attend, headed by Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion.

Recognizing the role of provincial governments and other parties in addressing climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has also invited provincial premiers and other party leaders, including Green Party leader Elizabeth May, to the conference.

Given the ever-increasing urgency of the climate crisis, the UN process has been frustratingly slow and lacking in the kinds of concrete actions required to keep global average temperatures from rising more than 2 C. The goal of the Paris talks is for developed and developing nations to adopt a legally binding universal climate agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide financing for developing nations.

To help guide negotiations, the David Suzuki Foundation has offered recommendations to Canada’s new government. The first is to develop a national climate action plan that sets new, ambitious emissions-reduction targets. We agree with the Climate Action Network Canada that cutting carbon emissions by one-third within a decade, or 35 per cent below 1990 levels by 2025, would fit the bill, and that reductions should begin immediately with targets enshrined in law.

The Foundation also believes the federal government must work with provinces to set a minimum standard for pricing carbon emissions, through carbon taxes, cap-and-trade or both, reaching at least $100 per tonne by 2020, and applying targeted regulations or standards where carbon price alone is not enough to meet emissions targets.

We’d also like to see government move ahead with commitments to low-carbon infrastructure, including investment in public transportation, renewable energy and climate adaptation, as well as employing natural systems to reduce impacts. Energy-efficiency standards for vehicles and buildings are also essential, as is a commitment to support the UN Green Climate Fund for developing nations.

We and other organizations will offer suggestions on a range of issues. For us, these include species at risk and habitat protection, marine protected areas, environmental rights, natural capital evaluation and improved relations with indigenous peoples. We realize the new government faces numerous challenges and must deal with competing interests around falling oil prices, pipeline projects, missing and murdered aboriginal women, national security, international commitments regarding terrorism and more. It won’t be easy and they’ll have to hit the ground running.

As leaders from Canada and the U.S. head to Paris with real commitments to address climate change, there’s hope for progress. This government seems open to engaging in conversations with Canadians from all walks of life and all parts of the country, and to accepting our global responsibilities. I wish them the best.


Written by David Suzuki with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

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David Suzuki says… “Let’s slow down, for the sake of ourselves and our planet”

SGC Admin:From our inbox to you: It’s not that hard to slow down… or is it? What will it take to get us to slow down?

David Suzuki Says….

Let’s slow down, for the sake of ourselves and our planet

Hands of senior man and baby holding Earth against a rainbow in spring Ecology concept Stock Photo - 12580809
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The Amazon rainforest is magnificent. Watching programs about it, we’re amazed by brilliant parrots and toucans, tapirs, anacondas and jaguars. But if you ever go there expecting to be overwhelmed by a dazzling blur of activity, you’ll be disappointed. The jungle has plenty of vegetation — hanging vines, enormous trees, bromeliads and more — and a cacophony of insects and frogs. But much of the activity goes on at night or high up in the canopy.

Films of tropical forests don’t accurately reflect the reality of the ecosystems. They’re skillfully edited shots acquired over many months. Our media-nurtured impatience and urgent sense of time often prevent us from seeing how life truly unfolds.

Nature needs time to adjust and adapt to biosphere changes. After life appeared on Earth, atmospheric oxygen gradually went from zero to 20 per cent, oceans appeared and disappeared, mountains thrust upward and then eroded, continents moved on tectonic plates, climate cycled between ice ages and warm intervals, magnetic poles reversed and re-reversed. Life flourished because species and ecosystems evolved over time.

The fossil record also indicates periods of rapid change, including mass extinctions when up to 95 per cent of living things were wiped out. Each time, survivors changed, adapted to new conditions and flourished. Still, recovery took millions of years. Humans have been around for a mere 150,000 years. We’re an infant species, but our precocity has allowed us to expand exponentially. Now our technological power and consumptive demand are undermining the planet’s life-support systems on a geologic scale.

We’ve become impatient. We’re so demanding that we’re unwilling to slow down and ensure our major projects are sustainable for human society and the biosphere. Over the past century, we’ve burned increasing amounts of finite fossil fuels that were stored and compressed over millions of years, exacerbating conditions that lead to climate chaos. We’ve clear-cut vast tracts of forest that have evolved over millennia, flooded huge areas under large dams, depleted our oceans with over-efficient fishing technology and spread vast quantities of toxic waste throughout the planet’s air, water and soil.

Governments rationalize these actions by claiming to do proper environmental assessments, but continue to impose restrictive time limits on assessment processes while reducing the number of scientists and other staff who do the work. It takes time to acquire scientific information, and it can’t always be done on a strict timetable.

If we truly desire a sustainable society, we require vibrant and abundant nature. To recognize that nature isn’t separate from us and fully understand how it provides critical services, we need patience to learn its secrets. We can’t survive, let alone be healthy and flourish, without clean air, clean water, clean soil and food, photosynthesis and biodiversity. But we’re overwhelming nature — and ourselves — with the incessant demands of our ramped-up consumer culture.

Fortunately, people are starting to remember that we’re part of nature and that what we do to the natural world we do to ourselves. They’re taking notice of the drastic impacts we’re having on Earth, our only home, and demanding that we show more care.

In New York on September 21, more than 300,000 people turned out for what was billed as the largest climate march ever, one of 2,646 marches in 162 countries. Leaders of some of the world’s largest corporations are calling for climate action and carbon pricing, and distancing themselves from organizations that have worked to stall progress. Even the heirs of the Rockefeller Standard Oil fortune announced they’ll withdraw their investments in fossil fuels, including the Alberta oil sands.

With the Blue Dot Tour, the David Suzuki Foundation and I are hoping to encourage all Canadians to become part of this growing movement to protect the air, water, soil and biodiversity that we and our children and grandchildren need to survive and be healthy. Like nature, social movements sometimes take time to evolve and unfold. We don’t always see their impacts as they happen. If we expect a dazzling blur of activity and immediate results, we’ll be disappointed.

Let’s slow down, breathe, listen, look and feel. Only then will we understand our place in the world and what we must do to live well on this small blue dot spinning in an enormous universe.

By David Suzuki.