Public justice must include climate justice

In only a few weeks, Canada will host the meetings of the G-8 and G-20, where climate change should be high on the agenda for all of the nations involved. In mid-May, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon came to Ottawa to plead with Prime Minister Harper to make climate change a priority issue for the G-20 discussions. Ban also exhorted the Conservatives to live up to the greenhouse-gas reduction targets Canada negotiated under the Kyoto Protocol. And why not? As UNICEF recently stated in its report on maternal and newborn health, climate change is, "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century." But Mr. Harper declined the Secretary-General's suggestions in no uncertain terms.

After last December's Copenhagen climate negotiations failed to agree on binding targets for emission reductions, Canada has once again lowered its sights. The Conservatives had already rejected the Kyoto Protocol, which was negotiated by the previous Liberal government and called for a six per cent reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020 based on 1990 levels. In Denmark, Canada supported the two-and-a-half page Copenhagen Accord (negotiated at the last minute by Washington and Beijing) which allows countries to set their own targets. By January Ottawa announced it would echo Washington's policy, and pledged a 17 per cent reduction by 2020, but based on 2005 levels. Unfortunately, this new target does not reach the reduction levels creation actually needs. By shifting the base year of our new target to 2005, Canada can actually do less to address global warming than we were prepared to do when we went into the Copenhagen negotiations!

The Copenhagen Accord also called upon wealthy nations to finance up to $100 billion in "new and additional" funding for adaptation and mitigation spending to allow poor countries to face the changes global warming is starting to impose upon them. Among donor countries, Canada's share of this new funding would be $300-$400 million in each of the next three years. Yet, the March 4th federal budget announced that development assistance funding will be frozen for three years starting in 2011.

Creation Care?

The Gulf Coast oil spill has Canadians talking about the environment again. And we certainly should be concerned about the oceans, which are home to at least half of the mass of life on this planet. According to Canadian journalist Alanna Mitchell's disturbing book, Seasick, climate change is causing a larger and more serious problem for human kind than atmospheric warming: global ocean change. Roughly a third of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the atmosphere has entered the ocean, and 80% of the extra heat we've created has also been absorbed there. Rising oceanic acidity is happening all over the globe at an astounding and troubling rate which is affecting all life on the planet.

Nonetheless, our professed commitment to creation care seems rather fickle. In 2007, when the economy was performing well, Canadians chose environmental issues as their main concern. Our government, reading the polls, got the message, and the Prime Minister declared climate change as "perhaps the greatest threat to confront the future of humanity today." But with the economic crash of 2008-2009, concern for the environment dropped from the minds of Canadians, and thus also from the lips of our political leaders.

Nonetheless, on the evening of May 5th a historic vote took place on Parliament Hill. By a vote of 149-136, with only the government voting against the legislation, Parliament passed the Climate Change Accountability Act. Bill C-311 sets a national, science-based emission reduction target that represents Canada's fair share of the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. This target is to reduce Canada's emissions to 80% below the 1990 level by 2050, which is identical to President Obama's 2050 target. (G8 leaders as a group committed to a similar target at their 2009 Summit.)

A Public Justice Response

Canadian churches were less than vocal in the lead up to the Copenhagen climate conference. United Church Moderator Mardi Tindal was the only North American church leader to attend the global event. But perhaps that is about to change. The Canadian Council of Churches is organizing a Religious Leaders' Summit to be held in Winnipeg from June 21 to 23. Over 100 faith leaders will gather from around the world to prepare an inter-faith statement for the G8, focusing on poverty alleviation, peace, and demanding action on climate change: specifically a commitment to avoid global warming of more than 2°C. And in Ottawa, CPJ is co-hosting a multi-faith retreat on climate change as a moral issue, designed to assist faith communities to help create political momentum in the lead up to the November- December UN climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico. There the nations of the world will return to negotiating the global warming action commitments that eluded them in Copenhagen – hopefully this time with a better result.