December 12th, 2008
Canada Chosen as “Colossal Fossil”
Dave Martin
Fossil of the year - Poznan 2008
The winners of the Fossil of the Day awards are chosen by a vote by the Climate Action Network International, which includes more than 400 non-governmental organizations from every region of the world.
Canada has played a shameful role here in Poznan, as this ‘prize’ confirms. We now have just one year left to reach agreement on a strong global climate deal. It’s vital that Canada stop blocking progress and start showing some leadership.
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Canada continued a dishonest misrepresentation of its national target, hiding the fact that its target of a “20% reduction by 2020” is based on 2006 levels, which is less than a 3% reduction from the 1990 base year.
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Canada opposed strengthened wording in support of science-based targets for industrial countries in the range of 25-40% reductions from 1990 levels by 2020
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Canada remains the only country to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol and then ignored it - we are now 30% over our Kyoto target.
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Environment Minister Jim Prentice emphasized that all countries have to make “an equality of effort”, and that we need a “symmetry of comparable efforts” from the US, China and India. This is a recipe for inaction. Developing countries will only join in once the industrial countries have made a commitment.
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In a mitigation workshop Canada embarrassed itself by arguing that Canada’s poor performance is justified because the country is so large and cold. This ignored the point that targets are set on historical levels. To the best of our knowledge, Canada has not got any larger or colder since 1990. In fact, the country has become somewhat warmer, due to something called global warming.
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Canada also argued that emissions from oil and gas exports (including tar sands) should not be counted against us. The tar sands are Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.
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Canada insisted on removal of a reference to indigenous peoples rights in a deforestation text.
Environment Minister Jim Prentice, and Canada’s chief negotiator Michael Martin deny that Canada blocked progress on negotiations in Poznan, but the simple fact is that if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Our objective, as a country and as a global community, is to agree on strengthening and extending the Kyoto Protocol at the negotiations that will take place in Copenhagen in December 2009. It will still be possible to achieve an agreement in Copenhagen, but time is running out.
Dave Martin, Greenpeace Canada’s Climate & Energy Coordinator, is in Poznan Poland as a delegate to the United Nations climate change conference, December 1-12, 2008.
Read more on Fossil awards
Read the Climate Rescue Weblog
Canada Chosen as “Colossal Fossil”
Categories: Energy and Climate, Greenpeace, KYOTOplus, Tar Sands
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December 13th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
awsome
December 13th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
And the Canuck delegation managed to deeply offend aboriginal peoples as well.
http://stimpsonwrites.blogspot.com/2008/12/canada-among-fossils.html
December 16th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Shameful. Criminal.
December 21st, 2008 at 11:57 am
it’s humilating to be represented by fearful, stay-the-course neo-conservatives. Harper and his henchmen are either daft as dirt or diabolical.
November 30th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
[...] targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. [...]
December 1st, 2009 at 10:56 am
[...] vermelho da bandeira canadense. Em 2008, após a COP-14, o país levou pelo segundo ano consecutivo o prêmio de Fóssil Colossal, dado por organizações não-governamentais àqueles países que mais emperram as negociações [...]
December 1st, 2009 at 6:49 pm
[...] In addition to this Canada received (for our second year in a row) 10 Fossil awards which are mockingly given to the country who does the most to disrupt negotiations toward a new global climate deal. Canada was the overall “winner” receiving the title of Colossal Fossil (see more Canada Chosen as “Colossal Fossil”). [...]
December 5th, 2009 at 7:51 am
[...] targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. [...]
December 16th, 2009 at 10:19 am
[...] last year’s climate summit, Canada was voted the Fossil of the Year—an award handed out byClimate Action Network International to the conference’s most [...]
December 18th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
ok people tend to forget that the world needs oil even theese hippies at this phony award. if we shut down the oil sands or even scale back development of oil and diamond mines etc canada will become a third world country. and we would have to buy our oil from arabian countries who treat women horribly so plz stop saying shutdown all factories and oil sand op’s because its just stupid much like this bad grammar’d rant of mine
December 21st, 2009 at 10:21 am
I’m proud to be Canadian and glad to see the government I voted for representing my views and interests instead of caving in to outside pressures.
“To the best of our knowledge, Canada has not got any larger or colder since 1990. In fact, the country has become somewhat warmer, due to something called global warming.”
Maybe the summers are warmer, but the winters have for the most part been exceptionally colder. And guess what, I don’t use my heating in the summer! So that leaves colder winters where more heating is required.
The money being WASTED by our government on these stupid and pointless* summits should be used to subsidize heating costs for HONEST, HARD-WORKING CANADIANS instead! (* you’re delusional if you think any significant measures will ever be adopted to curb “climate change” on the timetable being pushed)
And agree with Mike’s comment above; Canada isn’t a third world country and I don’t see why we should have to shoulder the shortcomings of countries that can’t carry their own weight. We already send aid for food and medicine because they’re more interested in buying AK47s,praying 20 times a day and burning American flags than tilling a field and getting an education. And now you want to guilt trip me cuz of my CO2 emissions? How about we just STOP sending food and medicine and take care of a big chunk of carbon footprint everyone’s so worried about at the same time.
December 21st, 2009 at 10:23 am
P.S. Merry Christmas!