Dal student urges action

Dal student Emily Rideout attended the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Poznan, Poland. (Danny Abriel Photo)

You can’t check it off on the One Million Acts of Green website, but Emily Rideout wants Dal students, faculty and staff to make writing a letter to their elected representatives—municipal, provincial and federal—their “act of green.”

“Writing a letter seems like kind of a boring thing to do but I think people underestimate the power of communicating with our representatives,” says Ms. Rideout, who attended The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Pozna?, Poland, in mid December. “Canadians need to pressure the government. The government needs to know we want strong action and constructive policies on climate change.”

A third-year student at Dalhousie majoring in environmental science and international development, Ms. Rideout attended the conference as a representative of the Sierra Club of Canada. She was dismayed, even embarrassed, by the stance of the Canadian delegation, which she characterizes as “obstructive.”

The conference at Pozna? is regarded as an important half-way mark in the negotiating process leading up to Copenhagen in 2009. Parties have agreed that in Copenhagen, an ambitious climate change deal must be clinched to follow on the first phase of the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

But Canada, a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, appears to be falling ever further behind on its resolve. While European countries called for a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases below 1990 levels by 2020, Canada said it needed to change its baseline year to 2006 The Canadian delegation also cited “national circumstances” to justify its poor performance in fighting greenhouse gas emissions by noting that the country is “large and cold and its cities are far apart.”

“But as far as I know, Canada is not any larger or colder than it was in 2002 when Canada ratified Kyoto,” says Ms. Rideout.  “In fact, temperatures have increased, due to something called global warming.”

She was also infuriated to hear the excuse that “Canadians want to consume fossil fuels … the government can’t make reductions because Canadians won’t have it.”

It’s not only Ms. Rideout who was disappointed with Canada’s position; people around the world have noticed the lack of action on climate change.

Coinciding with the UN conference, the Climate Change Performance Index was released by the social advocacy group Germanwatch. The index, which ranks 57 industrialized countries and emerging economies, concluded that no country was doing enough to prevent average global temperatures from rising beyond two degrees Celsius—considered to be a dangerous tipping point. Canada hovered at the bottom of the annual ranking; only Saudi Arabia’s climate change plan was worse.

Furthermore, Canada won 10 tongue-in-cheek "Fossil of the Day" awards during the two-week conference for being the country that did the most to block progress on a climate deal. This was enough to earn country the overall top prize, the “Colossal Fossil.” The dubious distinctions came from Climate Action Network International, a group that includes more than 400 non-governmental organizations.

“To tell you the truth, I felt awful that this is a position my government has taken on my behalf,” says Ms. Rideout, a member of SustainDal, a student society that aims to create a culture of sustainability at Dalhousie. “I feel it’s absolutely inappropriate to do so little on such as urgent issue that concerns us all. They certainly don’t represent my views and I don’t think I’m alone in that.”

And that’s why she’s advocating that Canadians get out pen and paper and let their governments know how they feel: “Climate change is urgent. Canada needs to get its butt in gear and come to Copenhagen ready to move forward.”