Scorecard says Canada Flunking Climate Test

But that is what we saw at last week’s meeting of the G8: a vague agreement on the need for an ill-defined quantity of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (when today’s leaders will be long gone) and a deafening silence on the desperate need for near-term reductions (which is what they can really do something about).

These are some of the most powerful people in the world and they flunked a pretty fundamental test of leadership, according to the 2008 G8 Climate Scorecards released jointly by WWF and the global insurance company Alianz SE.

Perhaps I’m not being entirely fair, as the Europeans were pushing for tougher targets and action plans that will start now and have a big impact by 2020. Indeed, it is the countries that are already doing the best on climate change action that are pushing hardest for themselves and others to do more. Yet even the best performers (the UK, France and Germany) need to do far more if we are to achieve the kind of reductions that scientists say are necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

But my own beloved Canada came out a dismal second-last on the Scorecard, and was amongst those arguing against stronger action at the G8 Summit.

If you cut through the spin, the justification for this sorry state is that we’re using our high pollution levels (5 times the per capita rate in China, 10 times the rate in India) as leverage. The richest countries in the world, we are told, should hold back on taking significant action on climate change until the big (but poor) developing countries agree to do more. But China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico actually did make such an offer to the G8 (I’ll blog more on that later), and yet we are still holding back.

While I can recognize the tactical cleverness of seeking to do as little as possible while trying to get others to take up the slack, it is morally questionable and, in this case, strategically stupid. It only makes sense if you think we can somehow construct a bubble around Canada that protects us from global climate change, or that we can solve this problem without everyone doing everything they can to reduce emissions.

And it is not a climate strategy that I want to have to explain to my son when he asks me someday what the hell we were thinking of in 2008.

by Keith Stewart