» Harper: MIA at G8 - Greenpeace Canada weblogs

July 9th, 2009

As our Greenpeace Canada Activists greet the morning 150m above Venice, I read promising headlines from the G8: “Target found in G8’s climate change fight” promises the Globe and Mail; “G8 vows ‘ambitious’ greenhouse emissions plan” reports the National Post.
But reading on, it becomes apparent that there’s nothing new - just the same old story of wishy-washy resolutions and of Stephen Harper paying lip service to climate change, but missing in action.

The Good: Harper and the other G8 leaders recognized the principle of keeping the global average temperature increase (from pre-industrial levels) below 2°C, in order to avoid catastrophic climate change impacts. And an 80% reduction by 2050 is way more than Harper had previously discussed.

The Bad: Although the G8 recognized the importance of keeping global temperature increases below 2%, Harper has not committed to actions that would prevent this. Greenpeace called on the G8 to collectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, and to provide financing of over $100 billion US to the developing world to fight climate change. They did neither. And our federal government is already backtracking from the 80% target.

The G8 was supposed to break the current stalemate in climate negotiations - namely, majority-world countries like China, India and Brazil refusing to commit to GHG reductions without good faith action from the G8. Instead, we have empty promises that will make our work at the next international meetings that much harder.

Ban Ki-Moon criticizes the G8’s plan on climate change