News | Climate Change

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Harper+pressured+climate+change+agenda/3149140/story.html

OTTAWA — It was described by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a “sideshow,” but international leaders are mounting pressure on the Canadian government to include climate change as a major issue on the agenda at upcoming G8 and G20 economic summits in Huntsville, Ont., and Toronto.

“We are actively consulting our guests to prepare the agenda,” Harper said last week in the House of Commons.
“Obviously, a lot of subjects will be discussed, including some issues surrounding climate change. At the same time, the G20 isn’t expected to replace the United Nations (global-warming) negotiating process.”
In recent weeks, international leaders from the European Union, Mexico, the United Nations, along with Nobel Peace Prize laureates have all come forward, urging Harper to allow the summits to consider the climate-change issues as part of their discussions on achieving a sustainable economy.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who is hosting the next annual UN climate-change summit in the fall, underlined the importance of Canadian leadership on global warming last month during a trip to Ottawa. While Calderon said that the world cannot wait for the United States before acting to slash emissions that are trapping heat in the atmosphere, Harper said he is addressing Calderon’s concerns.
“In the past, there have been discussions of the climate-change issues at the G20 for the purpose of trying to assist, not replace, the United Nations process,” Harper said. “Of course, as I indicated to President Calderon during his visit, we will continue the same practice here.”
Harper has promoted action to address maternal and children’s health as a priority at the summit, but some critics have warned that the world can only address these types of challenges along with the economic recovery by focusing on sustainable growth that moves the world away from fossil fuels, such as coal and gasoline and the pollution they cause.
Six founding members of the Nobel Women’s initiative, which promotes women’s rights, peace justice and equality, also noted in separate letters to Harper and other G8 leaders last week that the impacts of environmental degradation and global warming are security issues that can put the global economy at further risk if they are not addressed.
Last month, Harper suggested at a town-hall style event that discussions on climate change would be a sideshow at the upcoming summits.
Environment Minister Jim Prentice has also delayed plans to regulate pollution from large industrial facilities in Canada, explaining he won’t act alone until the U.S. is ready to implement its own plan, as he did with proposed regulations to crack down on tailpipe emissions from new cars.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said Harper has failed to lay the groundwork for significant discussions by failing to organize a meeting of G8 or G20 environment ministers prior to the summit.
May said it has been a tradition for nearly two decades that she witnessed firsthand at a 1995 meeting in Canada, when former environment minister Sheila Copps invited her to one of the discussions with other ministers, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, who is now chancellor of her country.
“The focus of that day’s meeting was 100 per cent (about) climate change,” May said. “It was (establishing) the architecture for the deal that became the Kyoto Protocol. It was (about) the obligation of industrialized countries to go first. . . . There was no debate about the science. There was only a discussion on how we’re going to move forward.”
Clare Demerse, the associate director of climate-change policy at the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental research group, noted there has been only one other economic leaders’ summit in recent years that did not have separate preparatory meetings of energy or environment ministers. That summit was hosted by former U.S. president George Bush’s administration in 2004.
“At this point it should be very clear that climate is an economic issue,” said Demerse, noting that G20 co-host, South Korea, has put 80 per cent of its economic stimulus money into green initiatives.
“It’s about the clean-energy jobs of the future. It’s about transforming the way that we generate energy. These are fundamental economic issues.”
She said the G8 meetings offer an opportunity for developed countries to take the lead on financing sustainable growth in the developing world, while the G20 has the opportunity to develop a plan to phase out subsidies and incentives for fossil fuels.
A leaked internal government memorandum urged Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to “lead by example” by zeroing in on some existing incentive programs that could free up money for balancing the federal budget, Canwest News Service reported last month.
Meanwhile, Prentice said he is still participating in other meetings with his international counterparts to negotiate a binding climate-change treaty, following up on negotiations from last December’s global-warming summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.
“The international leaders have already spoken,” Prentice said. “They’ve already given their directions on what needs to be done and we’re doing it.”