NEW YORK — As global carbon emissions continue their record-breaking rise, Canada has joined more than 100 other countries at the United Nations climate summit to pledge action amid widespread cynicism about their strength and sincerity.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opened the one-day summit Tuesday, telling the world leaders, “we are not here to talk, we are here to make world history.”
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, the newly minted UN Messenger of Peace, told the leaders they had a choice. “The time to answer the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet is now,” he said. “You can make history or you will be vilified.”
Unlike the leaders of many countries, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declined to show up, preferring to send Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq.
In her speech, Aglukkaq noted that Canada has delivered $1.2 billion in fast-start financing to help developing countries adapt to climate change. She promised that Canada would take additional action to regulate automobile emissions. The regulations will align with the far stricter U.S. standards. Ottawa has estimated this would reduce fuel consumption by 50 per cent by 2025. The transportation sector generates about 25 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, she said.
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the UN summit. The summit was brought together world leaders, scientists and activists looking to curb climate change. (ANDREW BURTON/Getty Images)
The announcement wasn’t entirely new. Canada had announced as early as 2010 that it would align its emission standards with those in the U.S. Nevertheless, Canada’s emissions will continue to climb, according to an emissions audit submitted annually to the UN, partially because of increased production in the oilsands.
Aglukkaq also promised to draft legislation designed to reduce carbon emissions from heavy vehicles in 2018 by up to 23 per cent.
She said Canada was the first major coal user to ban construction of “traditional coal-fired electricity generation units.”
“This further cements Canada’s place as a global clean energy leader as we have one of the cleanest energy mixes in the world with more than three-quarters of our electricity supply emitting no greenhouse gases,” she said, referring to hydro power.
Canada’s “approach is working,” she said. “Canada’s per capita emissions are now at their lowest level since we started recording in 1990.”
U.S. President Barack Obama told the summit, “We cannot condemn our children, and their children, to a future that is beyond their capacity to repair.”
“No nation is immune,” he said. “In America, the past decade has been our hottest on record. Along our eastern coast, the city of Miami now floods at high tide. In our west, wildfire season now stretches most of the year. In our heartland, farms have been parched by the worst drought in generations, and drenched by the wettest spring in our history. A hurricane left parts of this great city dark and underwater. And some nations already live with far worse. Worldwide, this summer was the hottest ever recorded — with global carbon emissions still on the rise.”
Obama said the U.S., which is the second largest carbon emission producer next to China, has “begun to do something about it” with stepped-up investments in clean energy, stricter regulations on car emissions as well as energy consumption in homes, factories and commercial buildings.
While Danish President Helle Thorning-Schmidt listens, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, President of Kenya, speaks at the Climate Summit. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
He claimed that during the past eight years the U.S. has reduced emissions “more than any other nation on earth.”
As the world’s two largest economies and emitters, the U.S. and China have a “special responsibility to lead” in carbon reduction, Obama said, and he challenged the rest of the world to join them.
Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli insisted the world treat developing nations, including China, differently than developed nations, allowing them to release more heat-trapping pollution. But China signed on in support of pricing carbon and vowed to stop the rise of carbon-dioxide emissions as soon as possible.
As world leaders delivered their speeches it echoed the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, when the call to action rang from every speech followed by years of inaction.
Several western countries announced pledges to the Green Climate Fund for helping developing countries adjust to climate change. France and Germany pledged $1 billion US of climate aide over the next few years, including loans. Switzerland, Denmark and South Korea together pledged $270 million. Denmark will contribute $70 million of that total, in addition to a previous commitment of $250 million.
“Our words alone will not help,” Denmark Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said. “Denmark is working actively to increase climate finances.”
The Netherlands called for 2050 carbon reduction goals of 80 to 95 per cent.
Critics claimed the pledges, which are not binding, are not all they appear to be. “The fact that France has a tradition of mixing loans and grants in its climate finance commitments raises further questions about the exact nature and ambition of this pledge,” Oxfam said in a statement.
