By Oliver Klimek
For the past two weeks world leaders have been meeting in Glasgow, Scotland at COP26, the annual UN climate change conference.
These conferences started in 1995. That means our leaders have been at it for 26 years. Did they finally work it all out? The short answer is: ‘No’.
They made announcements and promises, but we are still in big trouble.
The science is clear: we must reduce GHG emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 to keep global warming to 1.5C.
At COP26, countries announced their targets but most are way too low.
Canada set a goal of 40-45 per cent reduction by 2030. That’s not even the minimum IPCC recommendation of 50 per cent. Canada must do better.
Most of us didn’t realize we would cause global warming when we started driving cars and heating with natural gas, but climate change is our fault and we need to fix it.
Have you set a personal target to reduce your emissions? How are you going to burn less fossil fuels (i.e., wood, coal, oil, gasoline, natural gas)?
If we want to leave our children with a liveable planet, we need to get started. Let’s start today.
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So at the conference they were debating about 1.5 C rise but Canada, especially the northern part has already exceeded 3 C and is trending upward.
Greenland is going to melt, there appears no stopping the process at this point, and thus we can expect a 3 meter minimum sea level rise when this happens. By the way, the ice does not actually need to “melt” all it has to do is sort of fall apart and fall or flow into the sea to cause the sea level rise by displacement. This can happen faster than you might think.
I applaud Biden’s plan to improve infrastructure as it has to help, but would caution that a 3 meter sea level rise will require a lot more “change” than adding a bit to a few sea walls in selected ports. Put simply, I would not be buying real estate on the coast of Florida or in New Orleans!
Greta called the conference a lot of “Blah, Blah, Blah!” and in many ways she is probably correct.
On the other hand, do we really seriously think that places like Bangladesh are or can do anything to help stop the warming? They are struggling just to feed themselves, there is nothing left over for anything else.
As pointed out by an earlier commenter, it has taken us years, essentially all of Canada’s brief history, to build the infrastructure we currently have. Things like the Trans Canada Gas Pipeline are engineering marvels. Do we really think we have the ability to wave some magic political wand and “change all this” to something non polluting in a matter of a few decades? An unbelievably ambitious goal I’d say, even for someone as starry eyed as our friend Tudeau, and probably well beyond most of our budget capabilities. C
We have to start somewhere and soon however so we need to sort of pick battles we might actually win here and get going on them now. The choices are many and varied, some really simple, some requiring a total social outlook change that might be difficult but we all need to sort of take a reevaluation of our lifestyles and start where we can. Just following some long ago written municipal plan, now hopelessly out of touch with climate reality, will not do the job.
The Liberals have taken the decision to to announce to the world at Scotland that Canada will cap emission on Alberta”s Oil and gas emission ( effectively slowing down production to a stop), cease the use of coal to generate electricity and ban the use of internal combustion engines, reverse deforestation by 2050. They have dictated the terms to the Canadian pubic. They conveniently neglected to declare a ban on the import of foreign oil and it’s consumption .They have done all this to impress the UN and the world , done so without describing the plans , details, alternatives and devastating consequences to the Canadian economy. This they describe as leadership.
cop 26 what now. most people that are on the climate bandwagon do not realize if all fosil fuels were eliminated would you still have plastic for referigerators, microwaves, stoves, the computer you hold in your hand, cars(mostly plastic), televisions, enough. you might be able to ride your bike to work at 30 below if the tires last. what about all the people the live 30 to 60 kms from town. no more snow birds. the gretas in the world have not thought this problem thru. just s thought!!!
I think all this talk about global warming is getting out of hand. Back in 1989 I think it was science predicted that by the year 2000 the arctic would be ice free and the eastern seaboard would be under water. now there is still ice in the arctic and as far as I know new York is not under water almost thirty years later. Now they say we have 8 years to stop burning fossil fuel or we will be in big trouble. While I do agree that this old world is getting warmer I don’t agree that there is very much we can do about it. We can start driving an EV or maybe even use something else for heating our homes but to think of doing this in 8 or even 50 years is just plain not possible. First no one has the money to do it second there is not enough workers to even think of making all the retrofits in every home in canada even if there was the manufacturing capacity to make the required equipment. And even after all this is doone the world will still be getting warmer that is nature. All that being said what we should be talking about is cutting out pollution and trying to get the air we breath back the way it was 80 or 100 years ago these things are linked together.
You can find many other ways to reduce your carbon footprint at Climate Action Muskoka’Ss Community Carbon Challenge: https://www.climateactionmuskoka.org/community-carbon-challenge/ Join 236 other Muskokans by taking the challenge!