Canada should put oil sands on hold: climate change expert

By Monique Beaudin, Canwest News Service

MONTREAL — Canada should be doing much more to tackle climate change, and consider closing down the oilsands projects in northern Alberta, the head of an international scientific panel on climate change said Monday.

Canada should follow the European Union, which has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In contrast, Canada’s plan is to only cut emissions by 20% below 2006 levels by 2020, a target that many scientific and environmental observers say is far too low.

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions climbed 26% between 1990 and 2006.

“In the last couple of years, I’m afraid, Canada has not been seen as sitting at the table,” Mr. Pachauri said in an interview in Montreal on Monday. “I think Canada should be doing much more.”

Pachauri, who accepted the 2007 Nobel Prize along with former U.S. vice-president Al Gore for their work on climate change, pointed to Germany and Japan as examples of countries that have set aggressive emissions targets and embraced renewable energy.

Mr. Pachauri made the comments before heading to New York for Tuesday’s United Nations summit on climate change.

World leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, are meeting there for talks on an international treaty to cut worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Pachauri warned unless quick action is taken, the impacts of climate change will get “progressively worse.”

“If you don’t take action early enough, you are going to get a number of failed states all over the world, and that would be very harmful for human society as a whole,” he said.

He said countries like the island state of Maldives are threatened by rising sea levels, while extreme weather events such as floods and droughts will affect African countries that lack the resources to withstand them.

While Mr. Pachauri admits there are significant hurdles to reaching an agreement — including a reluctance by developed countries to agree to tough emissions cuts until developing countries like India and China do the same — he said he is optimistic a deal will be reached. To do that, he said, developed countries will have to take the first step.

“Unless the developed countries are prepared to show their commitment to taking action, I’m afraid it will be unfair, unrealistic and unethical to expect the developing countries to do it,” he said.

As for Canada, he said the country should put the oil sands projects in northern Alberta on hold until technologies like carbon capture and storage — trapping carbon emissions underground instead of letting them collect in the atmosphere where they contribute to climate change –— are better developed.

“It’s something that perhaps could lead to regrets later on, so you might as well make sure that all the requirements that are to be met — to ensure environmental protection — are taken in hand right at the beginning rather than being forced to take actions later,” Mr. Pachauri said.

Last week Greenpeace released a report that said the oil sands projects are already creating more greenhouse gases than countries such as Estonia and Lithuania.