Hello, Yukoners:
Today, I head to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen for its final days. I’ve already heard from a number of you who know I am traveling as part of the Yukon delegation. Some of you are wondering whether the money spent to send the delegation there would be better spent in the Yukon to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Others have asked me to go and tell the international community about what is really happening in the North – everything from the damage to personal property to impacts on wildlife, plant life and traditional cultures.
During the first week of the conference, the media reported Canada had embarrassed itself internationally by its weak stance and its lack of commitment to the needs of our future generations. When Canada attended the Kyoto conference, it made commitments it later wasn’t able to meet. Now the world’s politicians are not only challenged to come to an agreement they believe they can fulfill when they get back home but an agreement that will actually reduce the human-caused negative impacts to our planet's climate.
I can’t help but feel embarrassed that I’m not part of one of the international delegations committed to joining with progressive countries around the world prepared to make the real changes needed to solve real problems. I still think it’s important for me to go and represent the interests of those Yukoners who want the world to know they are concerned about what is happening in our North. I also think it’s important to look at what the Yukon is spending on the delegation and to examine the results we achieve while we are there.
During the four days I am at the conference, I will use every opportunity to speak about Yukon’s perspectives. I will also be listening to what other delegates have to say about what their countries are doing. And, lastly, I will listen closely to what the Canadian government has to say about its plans to participate in what must be a global undertaking.
Hello, Yukoners:
Here in Vancouver today I'm still more than 24 hours from arriving in Copenhagen but I wanted to let you all know that on the way up to the airport Friday I stopped at the Elijah Smith Building to join with the 24-hour vigil for a few moments where other Yukoners are keeping a close eye on what is happening in Copenhagen. I was presented with a World Unity Flag which I am honoured to take with me as its development was a positive effort to raise environment awareness which began in Canada. For more information about this flag, check out their website at www.worldunityflag.org, where it explains that "The Unity Flag is offered as a “unifying-symbol” for the World Community to promote the awareness and appreciation of our world as a whole-system." I also heard from others at the vigil who spoke about how precious life on this planet is and how they were looking for political leadership to take decisive action to combat global warming.
Like others, who are following the stories that are coming out of Copenhagen on a daily basis, I want to remain positive about the efforts that are being made to reach an agreement before the end of next week, and I think there is still reason to hope when you hear good news stories like the European Union's recent proposal to fund 7.2 billion euros during the next three years to help developing countries deal with the impacts of climate change. I'm also hopeful that it's not too late for Canada to show the leadership we were once known for on the international stage with real commitments of our own.
My next chance to talk to you will likely be the 14th after a morning briefing from the Government of Canada and a separate Yukon Delegation briefing. I will also be attending a session later in the day led by the Arctic Council Working Group on "The Greenland Icesheet in a Changing Climate" and I am looking forward to hearing what our northern neighbors’ plans are in light of the impacts they are seeing to their region.
Just a quick note to say that after a few plane delays I arrived in Copenhagen at about 9:30 a.m. Yukon time (6:30 p.m. Copenhagen time).
All of the Canadian delegates are staying at one location and as it turns out the Chinese and American delegates are also at this same location. It was a bit of a shock to see riot fencing around the entire building, but there were no demonstrators when I arrived. I was told there had been a large demonstration outside the day before and that both pepper spray and tear gas had been used to disperse the crowds. Overall, I am hearing that the demonstrations are peaceful and not as bad as we are all hearing in the media.
Since my arrival, I've already seen Premier Gordon Campbell (B.C.) and Premier Floyd Roland (NWT) and Jim Prentice, Minister of Environment for Canada, who was taking part in discussions today with over four dozen other environment ministers from around the world. I am expecting that there will be a briefing on these meetings in the morning. I am, as I mentioned yesterday, looking forward to seeing for myself how the negotiations are going and reporting back to you tomorrow evening.
Hello, Yukoners:
I cannot summarize the day’s events easily; things did not go as planned. The turnout for registration was overwhelming, and it was clear both the conference organizers and the police were caught off guard. While the advance members of the Yukon contingent had arrived the previous week, the rest of us, including myself, still required the photo ID that could only be obtained upon arriving.
We were all at the conference centre at about 7:15 a.m., and while it was difficult to tell, the number of people lined up to register could have numbered more than 500. The doors opened at 8 a.m., and until about 9 a.m., the line moved slowly but steadily forward. A short time later, however, the line structure fell apart and people surged in from both the left and right, until we were one big mass. I was less than five metres from the entrance when the police had moved into crowd-control mode. They linked arms and turned their backs to us, effectively blocking further access, while they tried to figure out how to move those people who had already registered into the building. There is no doubt in my mind that many of us were at risk of being crushed, and certainly the police themselves were in a high-risk situation. The trains were instructed not to stop at the conference centre until further instructed. I spoke to a number of people while waiting in the line. They had attended previous COP conferences, and they said they had never seen anything like this before.
It was 10:30 a.m. before I found myself right behind the barricade of police and I may very well have been one of the last people that day to be allowed into the building to register. The lineup then continued on the other side of the barricade, and it was another 45 minutes before I was actually able to enter the conference centre with my photo ID in hand. Others behind me were either still behind the police line when I left later in the day, or they had given up and gone home. But a very determined and sizeable crowd remained right up to closing time, hoping to receive their identification for tomorrow.
Once inside the conference centre, I was met by members of the YG advance team, who were able to quickly orientate me. The centre can hold up to 15,000 people. I heard later the total number of registered delegates had increased from 25,000 to more than 40,000, with about 5,000 of those representing the media.
Because I missed the daily 8 a.m. briefing for Canadian delegates on the status of the negotiations, I took the opportunity to approach as many international delegates as I could to get their perspectives on what happened last week and what they hoped to accomplish in the coming days. I spoke with representatives of governments from many countries: Cypress, the United States, Israel, Germany and Holland. I also heard the concerns of a number of parliamentarians from several African countries, including Tanzania, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Morocco. I spoke with representatives from numerous non-profit organizations. Their interests ranged from world peace to forest management to sustainable agriculture. I spoke to representatives from a number of international policy development think-tanks. I met a large group of our Canadian Youth Delegation, who were eager to speak to me as a Canadian politician. These youth are truly remarkable. They are incredibly articulate and have strong opinions on what Canada should be doing. Their message to our government and negotiators is simple: “Lead, Follow or Go Home!”
The last event of the day for me began at 5 p.m. It was an invitation to meet with representatives of the International Institute for Sustainable Development. It was there that I heard more about the status of the negotiations and the challenges those seated at the table face in reaching an agreement. Keeping in mind it is not possible in the eight hours I spent in discussions today to form a comprehensive insight into the complexity of the vast range of interests being considered here by more than 190 countries, I am hearing a sense of urgency to make an agreement happen. The economic implications of an agreement appear to be the biggest barrier. And I sense there are many here who feel the real crux of the matter, an agreement to reduce human impacts on climate change, is taking a backseat. That’s unfortunate.
As Yukoners, we cannot continue to naively say the impacts of climate change are most apparent in the North. From the stories I heard today, no part of the world is being spared from the impacts of climate change. While we are losing glaciers, lakes, forests and wildlife habitat, so too is every other region. Millions of people are already suffering from major changes to their environments, and this will cause changes in how people will live in future.
As I write these words, I can hear the sounds of ambulances, police cars, helicopters and what I am guessing are tear gas canisters going off. As more of the world leaders arrive in the coming days, it is apparent that preparations are underway to increase security, and there is no way to predict what tomorrow will bring. However, I am sure I will continue to spread the message that Yukoners are closely watching what is happening, and their expectations will not end when this conference wraps up at the end of the week.
Hello, Yukoners:
With 48 hours to go until the end of the conference, it seems to me that everyone’s focus now is not only on what we can do to support the end goal of a collective agreement but on what we can do to ensure that a binding agreement will provide for each of our own special interests. And these interests are as diverse as they are important.
Whether we all feel in the end that this was a successful enterprise will depend on the global team of negotiators’ understanding of what those special interests are, and how effectively each interest group was able to influence the negotiations to date.
Let me give you an example. My day began with an effort to beat the crowds to the building to ensure that I was able to hear today’s briefing by Canada’s lead negotiator, Michael Martin. Even though I arrived at 7:15 a.m., and I had no problem getting into the 8 a.m. briefing, I think it’s important for me to tell you that many others now have next to no chance of making their voices heard in the remaining days.
In order to accommodate the ‘high level’ late arrivals, and by that I mean the world’s presidents and prime ministers and their entourages, the COP organizers today reduced the number of non-profit and civil society participants to 7,000. Tomorrow that number will be reduced to 1,000, and on the final day there will only be 90 allowed into the conference centre.
And while many might feel it’s time to let the negotiators focus on the final drafts without any further ‘outside influences, I am sure that something vital is being lost by the reduced access of non-governmental interests during this final analysis.
For example, one of the five key issues Martin spoke about today is the challenge of defining in the agreement “the role of market-based approaches in achieving mitigation.” Or to put it another way, “How can government ensure that industry shares the cost burden of the current and future impacts of climate change?”
In practical terms, one strategy to do this is to persuade industry to provide increased funding for reforestation projects in undeveloped (or developed) countries as a means of increasing ‘carbon sinks’ or CO2 absorption from the atmosphere.
Industry is already supporting a number of model projects around the world and it has an interest in continuing to support this kind of climate change strategy as long as any new ‘Copenhagen Agreement’ ensures the flip side of the coin is that they receive ‘credits’ that are applied against their requirement to upgrade the aging industrial infrastructure, which contributed to human-caused climate change in the first place.
I can’t summarize all the pro and cons I’ve heard about this strategy here at the conference but one of the key questions put before me today is ‘What impacts are these model reforestation projects having on communities in developing countries now?’
At first glance, it might be hard to see that more protected forests could be a bad thing but if you ask some of the communities around the world whether they think their immediate need is for more forests or more food, I think everyone knows what the answer is. These programs are also limiting access for many whose livelihood was dependant on harvesting in these areas.
These particular problems highlighted to me how important the input of the non-profit and civil society agencies really is if a final agreement is going to satisfy the interests of regional human populations as well as the global community. Because these non-governmental agencies are often closest to the front line, there is no doubt they are the experts in identifying the first known reforestation program outcomes. It’s clear to me that the input of every expert is needed when the final draft of an agreement is reviewed. And due in part to logistical constraints -- the size of the convention centre-- that simply will not happen.
In the end, we are left knowing that over the next two days the political leaders of the day will have to expect that their negotiators, who came here with their own agendas, based on each of their country’s specific political, social and economic interests, will see fit to inform them about what they have learned about the global story and how that must lead them all to compromise.
There is one last thing I need to tell you about. Our Canadian Youth Delegation is still working hard to get the message out to you about what their interpretation of the agreements is to date. And it would be a fatal mistake for the older generation and these negotiators to assume that our youth do not have the level of sophistication to understand what is at stake and what will be required to begin to fix the damage we have caused to the planet.
I have seen firsthand again today the breadth of their understanding of the issues around these negotiations and their technical capacity to compile information. There is no limit to the energy they are putting into communicating to the rest of us who are busy with our daily lives what legacy we must leave for them.
I believe it’s critically important for this group and other youth groups here to be given every opportunity for continued access to information, and I share their concern about the restricted access over the coming days.
Hello, Yukoners:
There are two important matters interfering with the production of a final agreement. I ask for your patience as I try to highlight the events of today I think will best provide you with an understanding of these two issues.
With many of the world’s leaders now on the ground here in Copenhagen, there is a new context to the process of the negotiations, which is the inevitable result of high-level political agendas.
The main and side table negotiations are going on around the clock, and with a number of heads of state, including Gordon Brown, prime minister of the United Kingdom, here at the same hotel where I am staying, I am watching unbelievable pressure build from a front-row seat.
It is no exaggeration to say the sounds of sirens and tear gas canisters exploding in different parts of the city is a reoccurring backdrop to the events here.
Just like the day before, I had no problem entering the conference centre, but now hundreds of police and dozens of police vehicles were strategically surrounding the property. I left this morning’s Canadian briefing with the intention of attending a session that was supposed to start at 10 a.m., where the ad hoc working group was going to report on progress made towards plans for long-term co-operative action under a new convention.
By 11 a.m., the session had still not started, and so I decided to leave the COP conference centre to make my way to the Inuit and Arctic Indigenous Peoples Global Call to Action afternoon event, which was going to be held a few kilometres away, at a separate building set up as the Arctic venue for the duration of this conference.
At the COP conference centre exit, I learned that the metro station immediately outside was closed again, due to crowd control measures and that I would have to walk to the next metro station. That proved to be almost impossible.
I could also now see that a large group of demonstrators had arrived at the end of the entrance road to the conference centre. About 40 police vans and at least 200 police officers in full riot gear and helmets moved in quickly to surround the demonstrators in a matter of minutes.
As I approached the police barricade for instructions on what to do, I was told I would have to go back and find an alternate route through a side street on the next block. I was able to pass through a secondary police barricade on that street with no interference but I now found that I would have to make my way around the back of the crowd of protestors and in front of the police barricade on the other side in order to get to the next station.
As I started to walk around the demonstrators, I was approached by a Swiss delegate trying to get into the COP centre. He told me to be careful and not hang around as he knew that demonstrators and anyone who appeared to be too closely observing the demonstrators was being arrested in other areas of the city.
While the demonstrators chanted phrases that I could not hear clearly, I was able to take a few pictures before I made my way through the other side of the police barricade without any interference. As I walked towards the next metro station, a few hundred yards away now, I engaged another delegate, also on route, to learn more about the reasons for his participation which I am doing at every opportunity.
The delegate was from Taiwan. I asked him the same two questions I have been asking other delegates throughout my time here: What was he hoping to accomplish at this conference and what impacts of climate change was he seeing in his country?
He told me he was here to be counted amongst those who knew that the world’s leaders needed to come to a binding agreement me the most recent typhoon in his country was so much larger and stronger than they ever expected, the early-warning systems for flooding they had so much confidence in had failed miserably. More than 700 were killed in a single mud slide in one of the rural areas of his country.
As it was now almost noon, I decided to return to my hotel to drop off the morning’s collection of reading materials and to have lunch before proceeding on to the Inuit and Arctic Global Call for Action event.
The other members of the Yukon delegation can confirm they have found me staked out a table in the hotel lobby for a number of lunches and every dinner so far this week. I have done this with a specific purpose in mind.
The table is front and centre to the traffic path of every delegate staying at this hotel and that includes, more recently, as I have already mentioned, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Canada’s Ambassador to the United States Gary Doer, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, Quebec Premier Jean Charest, Manitoba Environment Minister Bill Blaikie, Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger as well as a number of key advisors to the negotiations that I have met at various functions over the past few days.
While I have not approached Gordon Brown, who moves through the lobby quickly accompanied by his key advisors, many of the others are proving to be approachable and willing to take a few moments to provide me with more insight into what is happening than I have been able to discover in attending either the morning briefings or the following COP sessions. I should also add that Eric Fairclough, MLA for Mayo-Tatchun, and I have met informally every day to exchange what information we can.
However, I am sorry to say it is harder for me to support Minister Elaine Taylor’s agenda as neither Mr. Fairclough nor I have been included in her daily activities. But I would like you to known that Minister Taylor is more than willing to take a few minutes to provide information when we encounter one another.
Yukon government officials in attendance are also taking what time they can to provide an overview of their activities and to contribute to my understanding of the negotiations. As I see it, their participation here is primarily as observers to the ongoing discussions related to the negotiations to reach a final agreement but I am sure Yukoners will hear the specifics directly from the Yukon government at a later date.
And this is the first matter I want to draw to your attention. I want to provide you with some understanding of the difficulties I am having in accessing information. This is a reoccurring message that I am hearing from those who are far closer to the heart of this event than I can be. I believe it is one of the important reasons why the struggle to find common ground to secure an agreement has been so difficult.
Meetings are being postponed, there are delays in preparing reports, new participants are still arriving daily, some of whom now find themselves unable to enter the conference to attend the meetings they need to be at, and now the world’s leaders have to play catch-up as well.
Secondly, now that most of the leaders of 194 countries arrived at the table today, the negotiations now are further complicated. These heads of state must not only consider the environmental question, which has been the primary role of the environment ministers to date, but they are charged with reporting to taxpayers and business interests who are placing a whole different kind of pressure on those willing to sign an agreement.
And the demonstrators understand this very well. I don’t know whether these are the same protestors I saw morning, but when I left for the Inuit and Arctic Indigenous Peoples Global Call to Action event later this afternoon, I was met again by police barricades manned by hundreds of police and police vehicles outside my hotel.
If I was going to leave, I was informed it would be wise to stay away for at least an hour as another large protest was expected to pass by shortly on the street outside. I did stay away for longer than that, but when I returned, the demonstrators had not yet arrived
By the time I got to my hotel room minutes later, they were marching by and were escorted by the police and police vehicles some ways past the hotel. I can’t tell you the exact words on the banner they carried in front of them because I was too far away to see all the print. But I was able to tell that their message was along the lines of don’t let the economic questions override the environmental needs. And that will be the greatest challenge over the next days.
This evening, many of us here in Copenhagen are holding our breath while we wait for news of what we hope will be a major breakthrough in the negotiations. Over the past few hours the lobby of the hotel has seen a tenfold increase in security people. And during this evening’s dinner, heads of state, including Germany, China and Japan and the U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, were moving into and out of the hotel a number of times.
With the conclusion of most of the official events that I can participate in, I am beginning to reflect on what I have learned here and what relevance there is in a Yukon context.
During one of the train rides to a venue yesterday, I was approached by a woman whom I assume recognized me as a visitor to her country by my ID badge. She handed me a little book and invited me to visit the Karen Blixon Museum, which is centred on a 40-acre bird sanctuary just outside of Copenhagen, on the shores of the Øresund strait along the Northern Sealand.
Karen Blixon was a Danish citizen who left Denmark 96 years ago this month to farm in British East Africa (now Kenya) and she is the woman whose 18 years there is captured in film in the well-known movie Out of Africa, which is loosely based on the novel she wrote with the same title. In part, the movie tells of the changing times as British colonization disrupts the local cultures and dislocates the indigenous African populations in the area.
When Karen first arrives in Africa, the land appears as a new world, almost entirely unmarked by its human contact, and when she leaves Africa just 18 years later, you are aware that in an unbelievably brief time it has been forever changed by the sharply increasing human presence in the area.
Funded in part by revenues from the movie, the museum and bird sanctuary were established at her home here in Denmark. I see a correlation in her understanding of how the world can change dramatically in a short time and what we are all witnessing now.
I looked out my hotel window this morning to see where the ever-present helicopter was hovering. I saw again a line of 26 power-generating windmills located just offshore. This made me think about what the landscape in my community of Mount Lorne will look like in the near future as a result of the major climate shifts that are already occurring.
While waiting to do an interview with a local Whitehorse reporter yesterday, I heard your weather report predicting rain in the coming days and I thought about the global warming trend that continues in part because we as Canadians did not honour the Kyoto Agreement we signed 11 years ago on April 29, 1998.
Just over the mountain range that is less than 100 kilometres west of my home, I have watched the clouds sweep in pushed by the winds that flow in from the Alaskan coastline over one of the largest remaining icefields in the world.
I can sense the solid presence of that ice and I cannot comprehend its disappearance in my lifetime. A few kilometres to the south of my home over the mountain at my back lays Marsh Lake, one of the first major landing points along the Yukon route for the massive transcontinental migration of trumpeter swans and other bird species.
I cannot imagine the resounding silence of a spring if the swans did not arrive. But I know that the sand that lies just beneath the thin layer of vegetation throughout the Mount Lorne valley was placed there by the same moving glaciers that created the Carcross Desert 50 kilometres from my doorstep down the South Klondike Highway.
I have now heard from many people in countries around the world where they have seen the icefields disappear in their lifetimes. There are people here in Copenhagen who can tell you that the migratory animals that used to pass by their homes have disappeared. And there are many here who have already witnessed the ground beneath their feet become a desert that was not there when they played outside their homes as children.
The devastation already witnessed by these conference delegates are re-emphasizing to me that all Canadian citizens need to shout out that it is simply not good enough for our government representatives to come home from Copenhagen telling us that the changing of light bulbs and recycling of waste is the priority for our nations.
As a community advocate for some years now promoting these very things, I want to point out that I still believe that a strategy that educates and modifies our behaviour as individuals is a key component to a successful outcome over the coming years. But I see here that this messaging by our governments may be serving to distract us from tasking our political and industrial leaders with their responsibilities as well.
If you are following the international media covering the events here, then you already know what I know from the briefings. Canada is not yet one of the six countries that has already made commitments to contribute to a fund that is a key demand from the world’s poorer countries already dealing with the devastation of rising seas, droughts and other impacts of global warming.
At this morning’s briefing, I was able for the first time to ask two questions of our lead negotiator: Will Canada make a commitment to a global fund and will northern and indigenous concerns be reflected in the shared vision text that will constitute the preamble to an agreement?
I was told Canada is prepared to commit to a fund based on a final agreement being reached and the amount of that commitment may be announced shortly. And our government has the intent to reflect indigenous concerns but the discussions relating to the shared vision have been deferred as specific negotiations relating to the economic and social aspects of the agreement have taken priority.
The day ended with the Arctic Athabascan Council side event: Caribou, People and Resiliency in Arctic North America. The session began with a review of data that clearly shows the retreat of the icefields worldwide, the warming and increased acidity of our oceans and the unusual variability of temperatures that are in contrast to historical norms.
The side event concluded with a number of presentations from indigenous representatives of the Arctic. An elder from Fort Yukon and youths from Old Crow and the Sachs Harbour area spoke of the changes they had seen.
And after hearing about the changes seen in other countries, it seemed appropriate that the week’s activities concluded with witnesses from the northern Arctic speaking about the changes in our region of the planet.
At midnight tonight, less than three hours away now, the negotiations are scheduled to conclude. And at the last morning briefing scheduled for tomorrow, I expect to hear that an extension for negotiations will be granted or that at least a framework for an agreement has been arrived at.
If an agreement can be reached, it will take some time for the various interest groups to determine whether it is what they were hoping for. One thing is certain, the unprecedented participation of so many countries seeking a solution to a global problem is a good thing, and this can only lead to improvements in how we govern ourselves together in the future.
Hello, Yukoners,
Like myself, the delegates I spoke with today feel we are no longer holding our breaths; we feel like the wind has been knocked out of us.
While Yukoners were still sleeping, two of the world’s most powerful leaders were addressing the crowds here in Copenhagen and they were not inspirational speeches.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao spoke first and it was a typical political speech. He listed off the list of accomplishments his country had completed to date and concluded with rhetoric about how his people would continue to do their part.
President Barack Obama’s speech followed a little later and it seemed that while he was still trying to motivate those with influence to act, he sensed there is not sufficient political will present here to achieve a deal.
My day began like every other, by attending the briefing for Canadians. This time I was on my own with the remaining Yukon officials, as both Minister Elaine Taylor and MLA Eric Fairclough returned to Yukon this morning. Michael Martin, our lead negotiator, said progress had been made but there was still a great deal of distance to close.
President Obama is still here and we know from the media that he invited a select group of 19 leaders to a special meeting as he tries to regroup. I was not surprised to hear that our Prime Minister was not included in that meeting. Stephen Harper did not even choose to address the convention here when he was given an opportunity. Environment Minister Jim Prentice was left to explain the Canadian position. It is clear that Canada has not been a player here.
I returned to my hotel at lunch and watched a group of Chinese youths wearing blue buttons line the lobby and guessed that the Chinese Premier soon would arrive. I asked one of the youths what they were doing and she said that they were waiting to protect their Premier. I looked at their bright young faces and I wondered if they were feeling any of the sense of disappointment that I was. I wondered if they knew that the primary stumbling block to an agreement here seems to be that the Chinese government is unwilling to commit to a transparency clause that would report on each country’s emissions and use of the global environmental fund. They see this as an infringement on their sovereignty.
One of the presenters at the Arctic Athabascan Council’s side event yesterday was from an organization known as Earthjustice (see www.earthjustice.org). They describe themselves as a non-profit public interest law firm and their representative was here to speak about their scientific report on the monitoring of black carbon.
Black carbon is having an impact on the world’s ice sheets that is as great as the carbon dioxide emissions are on the world’s atmosphere. It is a simple concept to understand. Anyone who has ever worn a black coat outside knows how much warmer it is than a white coat that reflects the heat from the sun. Black carbon is made up of the tiny black particles that are produced by diesel engines or factories, and they are floating up into the atmosphere, traveling with the intercontinental winds before they settle again on the earth.
These particles can be measured in our icefields and they are absorbing heat and causing the ice to melt at an even faster rate. We know the world’s massive polar ice sheets are a big part of what is keeping our planet cool enough for life. We also know that the melting of these massive ice sheets is what is causing our sea levels to rise. As we seek an international agreement on emissions we do not have the same level of awareness about the need to seek an international agreement to reduce the production of black carbon.
Just like CO2 emissions, black carbon particles don’t recognize borders and you would logically think that an understanding of this would lead to an understanding of why an international agreement and an international monitoring system are needed.
Every politician and bureaucrat who is returning to the free world, including myself, will have to answer to our constituents for the failure here in Copenhagen and I think you will hear a great deal about how our individual governments are going to do the right thing on their own. There will be a lot of rhetoric from governing politicians about what our individual (municipal, territorial, provincial, federal) climate change strategies are, and how that will have to be enough for now.
However, the reality is there was not sufficient vision here, and more importantly, there was not a good enough understanding of the environmental crisis the world is facing to bring about a coming together. The significance of an opportunity here was lost in the midst of greater concern about the world’s recent financial crisis. A few world leaders did not believe the people of this generation where prepared to make the economic sacrifices necessary to bare the financial cost of real action.
This is my last blog entry from Copenhagen. I firmly believe that even if President Obama can pull other governments together, even a few other countries at the 11th hour, the agreement will not be one of substance. And if the Chinese government is still just posturing to get a better deal for itself, then this is further evidence of its lack of respect for human rights. The events here should become a warning flag for every other interaction with the Chinese government.
Almost exactly one month ago, on November 23rd, I asked Yukon’s Economic Development Minister Jim Kenyon what his understanding was in regard to China’s track record when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions due to the mining and burning of coal, water pollution from industries and cities, human rights abuses and mineworker health and safety.
Minister Kenyon said that China needed more Canada. He probably should have said more U.S. or more France or more Britain, as these are the countries that have demonstrated leadership here.
Just yesterday, I learned the state-owned Chinese miner Yunnan Chihong Zinc & Germanium Co. Ltd. disclosed it will invest $100 million Canadian in a 50/50 joint venture to develop Selwyn Resources’ Howard’s Pass District zinc-lead project in Yukon.
I can’t reconcile what China is doing here with what they are doing in Yukon. I want Minister Taylor to speak to Minister Kenyon and the Premier about what happened here and for their government to then explain to Yukoners how their climate change strategy is compatible with their economic development strategy in a global context and I will be working hard to come to an understanding of this myself when I return.
I would like to thank Yukoners for the opportunity to have attended this conference. It was a life-altering experience and I hope you will feel that the expense was worth it and that I have done the job you asked me to do during my time here.