It seems incredible, but this is the last Sunday of 2019.  I do not need to ask “where did the year go?”  My 2019 was busy -national tour of every province and one territory – 37 communities, a summer of coast to coast Pride Parades, and then the national election – plus, one major personal event – getting married!

Today finds John and me on the train rattling across the prairies – our fifth BC-Ontario (or east to west) train trip of 2019.  That sets a new record for me.

So here we are, at the beginning of not only a new year, but a new decade. Back in 1990, we dubbed the ‘90’s as the “Turnaround Decade.”  We were wrong.  Had we done what we pledged to do at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, we would have averted the current climate emergency.

We failed to arrest climate change when we had the chance to avoid the climate emergency we now experience.  But we still have the chance to avert the worst.  And the worst is nearly unthinkable – so we push it to the back of our minds.  The worst is crossing a point of no return where human caused emissions trigger unstoppable, self-accelerating global warming.

The dawning decade must be the Turnaround Decade.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change October 2018 Special Report on 1.5 degrees C made it abundantly clear.  Globally, emissions must be cut in half by 2030. That requires starting yesterday.  We cannot afford to be wrong this time. We must turn-around. 2020 will be a major year for climate negotiations and pressure to ramp up our targets.

While, under the terms of the Paris Agreement, any government can, at any time, withdraw its target to establish a more aggressive set of goals, 2020 is the first year identified under the treaty for concerted and global improvement of climate goals.

The Madrid meeting, while failing on many levels, did re-affirm the requirement to ramp up in 2020:

The final COP25 decision, “Chile Madrid Time for Action,” called on governments “to use the opportunity in 2020 to reflect the highest possible ambition in response to the urgency of addressing climate change… Re-emphasizes with serious concern the urgent need to address the significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation efforts in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.”(Emphasis in original)

Our 2020 climate calendar is busy.  Nations that “are in a position to do so” are to table their new targets in spring.  This is to allow number crunching and review of whether the new aggregate emission pathway can hold to 1.5 degrees.  United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has called on leaders to come to a special session at the UN on April 22, to table their nation’s new targets.

April 22, 2020 is the fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day.  Guterres is clearly hoping for some gathering political momentum.

The COP itself will take place in November in Glasgow.  If there is to be any hope of averting a climatic meltdown and runaway global warming, the 2020 NDC’s have to be at least double what they are now.

That is the direction that the European Union is trying to put in place in its Green New Deal. The European Commission tabled it in the EU Parliament during COP25.

I heard quite a few ministers at COP speculate that if the EU can get its ducks in a row for the GND, it could spark real action at COP26. There is speculation of an EU deal with the Peoples Republic of China. The 15^th conference of parties to the biodiversity convention (yes, other treaties continue with their COPs) will take place in October 2020 in Kunming, China.  That creates a high level opportunity for China to also improve on its climate commitments.

If the EU and China are able to ink a deal for substantial cuts in GHG before we get to COP26 and Glasgow, that could start bending the emissions curve toward a stable earth system.

So now is the time for a major push on Trudeau, Wilkinson and the whole cabinet, for a significant increase in climate targets – to at least 60% below 2005 levels by 2030.  Announcing it early in 2020 would have a major impact on the web of relationships and negotiating positions leading to COP26 in Scotland.

So, next week, what New Year’s Resolutions will get us there.

Happy New Year!

Elizabeth

This weekly blog is published by Elizabeth’s EDA in Saanich-Gulf Islands. You can sign up for it here.

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Happy Solstice! And Good Sunday Morning from Bergen, Norway.  We arrived by train from Oslo yesterday evening to visit my two newly attached grandsons – John’s son and family live here.  So three more sleeps until Christmas!  God Jul!

Being the festive season, time for some good news for a change.

First up, the wonderful news yesterday from the Nova Scotia government. There will be no extension of the deadline for a system to deal with the toxic effluent from the mill in Pictou. The Boat Harbour Act, passed in the NS legislature to create a deadline for clean-up, will be honoured, closing down the current polluting abomination by end of January 2020.  That essentially means the mill will close.

That mill was built with one sweetheart deal after another by Scott Paper in 1967: grants in lieu of taxes, practically free access to Nova Scotia forests, repealing the “Small Tree Act” which had forbidden logging small trees to protect the saw log industry. (Thus, converting Nova Scotia’s forests from large and mixed forests for sawmills, to monocultural spruce-fir for pulp).  To protect those softwood trees from “competing” deciduous, in the early 1980s, Scott Paper decided to spray Agent Orange. So did the two other major multinationals in Nova Scotia. Local grassroots efforts organized to stop them, leading to a court challenge known as “the herbicide case” within which, to pay a bill of costs to Scott Paper, my family lost 80 acres of land. And on and on.  But to cap it off, the mill was built on lies to the Mi’kmaq people of Pictou Landing First Nation.

Back in 1967, to make life easy for Scott Paper, the NS Department of Environment was put in charge of waste treatment.  The fishing grounds of the Mi’kmaq was appropriated with the promise that fishing would be unimpaired.  The toxic stew of Boat Harbour wiped out the fishery and rendered the area unusable. Sneaking back with a friend from the First Nation years ago, I was appalled. It looked like a scene from the worst dystopian sci-fi imaginable – acres and acres of steaming, burbling toxic waste.  And the stench.

The solution proposed a few years back was a big pipe to carry the effluent out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The fishermen opposed the plan and so did Pictou Landing First Nation.  The mill owners were given the legislated deadline to come up with a workable plan. They seem to have gambled on the (usually) safe bet that the government would bail them out. Well, now that mill will have to close.  The provincial government announced $50 million to help the workers. I hope the money goes to the workers and not the mill owners.  We’ll stay on top of that. But for now, OH! Happy Day!!

Next up in a Good Sunday Morning of good news is the strongest court ruling yet that governments have a duty to protect citizens from climate crisis. The Netherlands’ Supreme Court rejected an appeal against an earlier pro-climate win.  The court confirmed that the government had explicit duties to protect its citizens’ human rights in the face of climate change and must reduce emissions by at least 25% compared with 1990 levels by the end of 2020.  (For contrast, Canada is currently 17% above 990 levels).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/20/dutch-supreme-court-upholds-landmark-ruling-demanding-climate-action

“…(T)the lives, well being and living circumstances of many people around the world, including in the Netherlands, are being threatened,” Kees Streefkerk, the chief justice, said in the decision. “Those consequences are happening already.”

Columbia University’s Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, hailed the decision: “There have been 1,442 climate lawsuits around the world…This is the strongest decision ever. The Dutch Supreme Court upheld the first court order anywhere directing a country to slash its greenhouse gas emissions.”

The 1,442 similar cases globally have been launched in Belgium, France, Ireland, Germany, New Zealand, Britain, Switzerland, Norway, the European Union, as well as the United States and Canada.  Personally, I do not want to wait until climate litigation makes it through the courts, but the pressure is building.

And to cap off your Good Sunday Morning, surprising news from India and China. The news comes from NASA. Advanced Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) was used to study changes in the greenery of the planet over time. This method led to a surprising discovery.  The planet is greener now than it was two decades ago.  Initially, the researchers were not sure how and why, but determined that tree planting in China and India was responsible. In fact, India is breaking records in tree planting having planted 50 million trees in just one 24 hour period.

https://ecobnb.com/blog/2019/09/nasa-earth-greener-india-china/

So with Trudeau’s promise to plant two billion trees, Canada cold start catching up. If only the tree planting was not to be paid for with profits from the TransMountain pipeline. Sorry!  I will stick to good news for this Sunday morning.

Merry Christmas! Be back in your inbox next Sunday!

Love and thanks,

Elizabeth

This weekly blog is published by Elizabeth’s EDA in Saanich-Gulf Islands. You can sign up for it here.

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Elizabeth May

Dec. 15th, 2019

MADRID–Last I reported was Thursday, which seems like a very long time ago.

It was clear on Friday that we were going into overtime. The entire COP25 had convened in plenary late Friday afternoon for an hour of initial reaction to the draft decision text. It was clear under the polite veneer of diplomatic language that much remained to be done.

The COP25 president, Chilean Environment Minister Carolina Schmidt, set out her instructions for ministerial facilitators James Shaw (New Zealand) and Barbara Creecy (South Africa) to get back to work in ministerial consultations. The exhausted teams started in again. They were actually making progress. Some countries that would never have considered accepting some Kyoto carbon credits at the start of the COP showed flexibility as there were clear rules to flush them out of the system in a relatively short time. Countries from the developing world that had arrived in Madrid looking for a mandatory system whereby a small percentage of each trade would be set aside to provide financing to the under-resourced Adaptation Fund were being persuaded to accept a voluntary system.

Friday evening, a 7 pm press conference from the COP presidency (the chair and the UN team) advised media that it was unlikely we would have a plenary or new text before Saturday morning. Reporters tried various ways to determine how long this may go. The answer: As long as it takes.

We went into overtime hours, past midnight Friday. Long hours of talks went through the night into Saturday. By Saturday morning, many delegations were thin on the ground. Many ministers had had to leave, and still the negotiations continued, with Minister Schmidt taking them all on herself. She didn’t sleep for days as far as I could see, and she kept focused and hoping the COP could bring in an agreed text on Article 6 (the section of the Paris Agreement that authorizes international emissions trading), as well as critical issues around loss and damage (the Warsaw International Mechanism), climate finance, strong language on human rights, gender, just transition and Indigenous rights.

As the clock ticked past midnight in Madrid, negotiations were still underway. Things got more difficult as the cafeterias were disappearing from the trade centre. Coffee booths were shuttered. They continued throughout the night and early morning hours. At around 3:30 AM Sunday, I thought that the flexibility from all sides was going to result in a workable set of rules for Article 6. But as was made clear from a number of delegations, the U.S. and Brazil blocked that text.

It is quite typical for climate negotiations to over-run their allotted time. Conferences of the Parties are always supposed to end by Friday evening of week two. They almost never do. Up until this COP, the longest and latest COP had been in 2011 in Durban, COP17, when negotiations wrapped at 6:30 AM on the Sunday morning. In Madrid, we smashed the record — running 44 hours late, into Sunday afternoon.

COP25 has finally drawn to its protracted and uninspired wrap up. For much of this COP, participants felt that we were in a state of suspended animation. The key negotiations took place behind closed doors. Ministers negotiated directly with each other in smaller groups and even one on one. The typical rooms full of negotiators, ministers and even heads of government arguing over every line — and sometimes even on punctuation marks — was replaced in this meeting with closed-door negotiations. And not every country was invited to every discussion.

So, did COP25 achieve anything? It’s a glass half full-half empty problem. The good news, the glass wasn’t smashed on the floor. That was Copenhagen. We are on track, with good language in the COP25 decision to ask for the highest possible ambition in new targets to be tabled in 2020, preferably in the spring. And we did not end up with the very controversial Article 6 having rules that would have damaged the whole Paris effort to hold global average temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degrees. There was no decision at all on Article 6. It gets punted to next year.

I am so tired now, after being in this facility for the last 29 hours, I know I need time to study the final decisions, which I know are better than what might have been. But the USA, Brazil, and Australia have been outrageous. At least, we avoided damage to the Paris goals. We move to next year’s mandatory new targets. But no one will boast of the wonderful work done in Madrid. It is a massive disappointment at a time we need real action.

Elizabeth May is the former Leader of the Green Party of Canada.

Click here to read the article as it was originally published in Policy Magazine.

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My Sunday morning started many hours ago.  As the clock ticked past midnight in Madrid (3 pm at home in BC), negotiations were still underway, as they continued throughout the night and early morning hours. It is now afternoon Sunday in Madrid.

It is quite typical for climate negotiations to over-run their allotted time. Conferences of the Parties are always supposed to end by Friday evening of week 2. They almost never do. Up until this COP, the longest and latest COP had been in Durban, when negotiations wrapped at 6:30 AM on the Sunday morning.

We smashed the record.  Not something we wanted to do!

COP25 has finally drawn to its long, protracted and uninspired wrap up.  For much of this COP, participants felt that we were in a state of suspended animation.  The key negotiations took place behind closed doors. Ministers negotiated directly with each other in smaller groups and even one on one.  The typical rooms full of negotiators, ministers and even heads of government arguing over every line – and sometimes even on punctuation marks – was replaced in this meeting with behind closed door negotiations.  If you want to dig deep into my daily reports from COP25, check out this link to Policy magazine. They asked me to produce a dispatch a day: https://policymagazine.ca/author/elizabeth-may/

Negotiators from countries pushing for urgent climate action came out from behind closed doors for a Friday press conference.  The High Ambition Coalition is a large group of countries – the European Union, Costa Rica, low-lying island states, Norway, New Zealand, Mexico, among others. The goal is to push for tougher targets within the Paris Agreement.

Canada is a member, but not present at the press conference led by the Marshall Islands.  Even the High Ambition Coalition can be accused of failing to walk the talk, as happened at the presser when one reporter zoomed in on Norway’s Minister of Climate and the Environment, Ola Evestuen.  Seeking a carbon neutral world, the reporter wanted to know how Norway justifies its oil industry.

This is what he said: “We have to prepare – we have to cut our own emissions as fast as we can.  We have to stop all use of fossil fuels….. We have to do this – all countries. And Norway will take its responsibility on this.”

It struck me how stunning it would be to hear any Canadian minister speak so clearly. Yes, Norway is still oil dependent. Oil represents more than one third of Norwegian exports and 12% of its GDP, far more than Canada.  Yet, Norway has also committed its sovereign wealth fund to renewables, while spurning fossil fuel companies and projects. Its state-owned oil company has pulled out of the oil sands.

Norway is still operating with areas of deep contradiction as underscored in a report from Saanich-Gulf Islands resident – David Boyd who serves as UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment. His report, described in The Guardian as “a stinging rebuke of the Norwegian government’s oil expansion” can be found here (Norway must resolve climate change and human rights paradox, UN expert says).

But Canada’s so-called leaders continue to perpetuate the nonsense that we can save ourselves in a climate emergency while adding more GHG to the atmosphere.

So did COP25 achieve anything?  It is a sort of glass half full-half empty problem.  The good news, it wasn’t glass smashed on the floor. That was Copenhagen.  We are on track, with good language in the COP25 decision to ask for the highest possible ambition in new targets to be tabled in 2020, preferably in the spring. And we did not end up with the very controversial Article 6 having rules that would have damaged the whole Paris effort to hold global average temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degrees. There was no decision at all on Article 6. It gets punted to next year.

I am so tired now, after being in this facility for the last 29 hours, I know I need time to study the final decisions. The final decisions are better than what might have been.  But the US, Brazil, and Australia have been outrageous, and avoiding damage while moving to next year’s mandatory new targets is a better result than I feared.

I am attaching a notice of very cool local climate initiative.  Please have a look and get involved!

Have a great day- Til next week!

Elizabeth

This weekly blog is published by Elizabeth’s EDA in Saanich-Gulf Islands. You can sign up for it here. 

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Elizabeth May participating in a European Parliament side event at COP25 titled Closing the Gap — Efforts to increase ambition in all Parties NDCs and the role of forests in coming closer to the overall Paris target.

Elizabeth May

December 12, 2019

Looking at the calendar, yes, COP is ending Friday. But it sure doesn’t feel like it can.

This is my tenth COP, having been at nearly every one of them since 2005, including COP11 when Canada hosted. This one has been, by far, the most opaque. Typically, I attach myself like a lamprey to a key negotiating group, dive in, help with the occasional arm twisting in the corridors, and track key text.

This is the one and only COP within which there are no negotiations happening in places and spaces I can access. Usually, having a “party” badge — bright pink signifying being on a national delegation — gets you into all rooms. That’s why, when Harper was Prime Minister and opposition MPs were not allowed on the Canadian delegation, as a Canadian Member of Parliament I attended as a member of the national delegations of other countries. In Durban, I was a delegate from Papua New Guinea. In Warsaw, I worked on the Afghan delegation.

Ever since the Harper defeat in 2015, I have been on the Canadian government delegation. This returns to situation normal for Canada. Other than in the Harper years, opposition MPs and NGOs have always had seats with our national team. As a delegate without a negotiation to access, I accepted more speaking invitations at this COP. Today, I spoke on two panels.

At this COP, there are a few factors at play that make it unique. Firstly, there is (by design or accident of text and bureaucracy?) a very thin agenda. The “must do” items have nothing to do with the massive demonstrations calling for action. We are in a climate emergency but here, at the centre of global action to save the world as we know it, the agenda is mind-numbingly technical. It is all about ensuring that a few stray bits of text and all of Article 6 from the Paris Agreement are sorted for a shared understanding of implementation.

Secondly, the negotiating process has been unusual. It may prove to have been a useful innovation, but it kept the process out of the large conference rooms where text is typically hammered out — line by line. The article 6 negotiations have been deftly managed by two key ministers — my friend and Green New Zealand Minister for Climate James Shaw and South Africa’s Barbara Creecy. They decided that, rather than enter into a room of ministers, stating and re-stating their national positions and red lines, they would consult each group or region one at a time. Then they identified the key issues and the nation or nations that had the strongest opposing positions on key sticking points of article 6. They then paired them up to seek compromise. This has been going on for three days now.

Article 6 is the part of the Paris Agreement that says countries can use international carbon trading as a way to help meet their own emissions targets. Key principles have to be that overall emission reductions are real. Sticking points have included the developing countries hoping for a portion of every trade to be essentially tithed, to go to the under-funded Global Adaptation Fund. As well, there are very critical issues of whether trading credits from the previous regime (Clean Development Mechanism under Kyoto) can be incorporated into the new Paris trading regime. The argument against inclusion of Kyoto credits is strong. They are essentially junk credits, contaminated by implementation that accepted trades that turned out to be pretty phony. For example, if a developing country was planning to build a wind farm anyway, should a wealthy country get credit for it? On the other hand, there are some good projects that could help industrialized countries reduce emissions. Another technical area of disagreement is the obvious point that both countries — the buyer and the seller — cannot take credit for the same reduction. This is the double-counting issue.

These and other issues appear to have been making progress, but as of late Thursday night, there is still no text to review. Not surprising, I learned that the draft decisions on article 6 were handed over from the co-facilitators to the presidency at midnight. Staff that had been working with the co-facilitators stayed on to help with drafting. They worked through the night.

All of this, including the important decision of the COP, giving direction to countries as to how quickly targets must be replaced, will be shared as draft text for final negotiation sometime tomorrow. Friday the 13^th.  What could go wrong?

Elizabeth May is the former leader of the Green Party of Canada.

Click here to read the article as it was originally published in Policy Magazine.

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Elizabeth May with New Zealand Climate Minister and Co-Facilitator of Article 6 Negotiations at COP25 James Shaw.

Elizabeth May

December 11, 2019

(MADRID) – Climate activist and freshly-named TIME Person of the Year Greta Thunberg addressed the largest plenary hall at COP25 today. Of course, it was packed. Decrying the lack of progress on fighting climate change, she told delegates, “This is not leading, this is misleading.” She assessed the COP as an opportunity “to negotiate loopholes and avoid raising the ambition.”

The cheers for her talk reflected a profound disconnect as negotiations proceed at a snail’s pace on technical issues — that could well lead to loopholes. The climate emergency, the real impacts all around the world; these are the stuff of discussion in the many presentations and side events. The nations gathered here continue to act as though we have all the time in the world when, in fact, we are running out of time for the world.

I had hoped that Canada might surprise by coming to COP with a new target to replace the old Harper target under which we still operate. The Harper promise, made in Copenhagen in 2009, is to reduce carbon emissions 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020. In 2015 it was pushed back to 30 per cent by 2030. It falls due next year. It has not a hope of being met. As former Commissioner for Environment and Sustainable Development Julie Gelfand (within the office of the Auditor General) reported in her audit, no one in government is even talking about the 2020 target anymore. It was replaced with the 2030 target. And now, potentially with a 2050 target.

Meanwhile, the only target that matters is the one set by science: We must reduce, globally, emissions of carbon dioxide by 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030, or we will blow past the Paris goal of holding to 1.5 degrees C global average temperature increase. In other words, we must end our dependence on fossil fuels. Rapidly.

Greta went on to say “…there is hope. I have seen it. But it does not come from governments or corporations. It comes from the people.”

I also find hope from school strikers, from Greta’s leadership, from the marchers and from indigenous leaders. But my greatest source of hope is from the growing strength of the Green political movement. This morning, I attended a breakfast strategy meeting with elected Green politicians from around the world. At COP25, five countries are represented by ministers for environment and climate who are members of the Green Party. Green ministers from New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, Belgium and Luxembourg are in positions to negotiate and press for real action. As well, elected Green parliamentarians from Germany, the Netherlands, the European parliament, Spain, France, Brazil and Canada as well as those still trying to get elected from Lebanon, Hungary, Poland and Estonia contributed what we see from the vantage points of our countries. One of the most impressive young women I have ever met, Stav Shaffir, co-leader of Israel’s Democratic Union and new co-leader of the Israeli Greens, met with me Sunday night, as she had to leave COP25 early for the negotiations over a Knesset coalition (that process had again failed by Wednesday, and Israelis are heading to the polls again).

These key, strategic, political Greens know the inside workings of so many governments. They give me hope. COP26 will be in Glasgow in November. It will require – under terms of the Paris Agreement – that every nation tables new targets, planned to be in place by March 2020, but realistically no later than the COP itself.

We are all exasperated by the slow pace. And I can hardly bear the thought of one more COP. But we have one last chance — one last open window. This one, COP25, must, at least achieve enough to avoid going backward. And then COP26 must go forward to get targets consistent with 1.5 before our window closes.

Elizabeth May is the former leader of the Green Party of Canada.

Click here to read the article as it was originally published in Policy Magazine.

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Elizabeth May

Dec. 9th, 2019

MADRID — The governments of the world have met every single year since 1995 to add precision and ambition to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — all the while failing miserably.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference of the signatories to the UNFCCC — also known as the Conference of the Parties (hence COP) — does this to advance, at an excruciatingly slow pace, progress under the UNFCCC, which was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. A “party” is any nation that has signed and ratified the 1992 climate treaty. All nations on earth have done so.

In 1992, every nation accepted the science and committed to reducing greenhouse gases to avoid levels that could be “dangerous.” Canada was in the lead back then, when former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney made a commitment to freeze our level of emissions at 1990 levels. Instead, globally, we have burned more fossil fuels between 1992 and today than between the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and 1992. Canada’s emissions are now 17 percent higher than they were when we made the pledge at Rio.

So, here we are in Madrid. Today, Monday, marked the beginning of the second week at the 25th COP. While every COP has the same rhythm, some are more intense than others. Negotiations are predictably slow. Major sticking points remain around Article 6 — the last remaining section of the Paris Agreement needing clear rules of application. Article 6 deals with global carbon markets — an area where lax rules could undermine the whole agreement. As the high-level negotiations on Article 6 get underway, it occurs to me that our best outcome might be to leave the article dormant. We’ll see how the negotiations unfold. I predict all-nighters.

Meanwhile, there were some rays of hope. Today, in the midst of the annual COP “Fossil of the Day Awards,” a rare “Ray of the Day” was awarded to Denmark for completing its climate legislation. This huge achievement cleared its last hurdles on Friday. The law — like the one Justin Trudeau promised in our recent election campaign — commits Denmark to carbon neutrality by 2050. Like Trudeau’s pledge, Denmark’s law commits to legally binding targets at five-year intervals.

The first of Denmark’s intervals starts where we should — in 2020. And unlike Canada, Denmark is serious about reaching 2050 neutrality. Its climate pledge is to cut its emissions 70 percent below its 1990 levels by 2030. Canada’s target is still 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

More good news from New Zealand, where Green Leader James Shaw is the Climate Minister. Working closely with Labour leader and prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, they managed to gain all-party support for their law — passed in early November. It also commits to carbon neutrality — or close to it — by 2050 with an independent Climate Change Commission setting targets derived from science in five-year increments.

Catching up with James today at COP25, he stressed how important it was to have achieved a bipartisan consensus on the NZ law. Knowing that all parties are onside “really drives the market,” he told me. It is already shifting investments in a big way.

So, rays of hope are wonderful to find. Canada’s new environment and climate change minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, arrives tomorrow. Against the odds, I keep hoping Canada will surprise.

Elizabeth May is the former leader of the Green Party of Canada.

Click here to read the article as it was originally published in Policy Magazine.

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As you read this, I am likely to be lugging a suitcase off the carousel at the Madrid airport. COP25 is about to enter its second week – known as the high-level segment.

Every COP has the same rhythm, while some are more intense than others.  The Conference of the Parties (hence COP) meets annually to advance – at an excruciatingly slow pace – progress under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  A “party” is any nation that has signed and ratified the 1992 climate treaty. All nations on earth have done so.

The first week is when the bureaucrats work to refine text and find as much agreement as possible. The high level segment is when heads of government (a few) and ministers (many) arrive to finalize text through political negotiation.

The Paris Agreement is the latest effort to bring precision to the more general UNFCCC goals.  I would say that the pace of the negotiations is glacial, except as humanity procrastinates in eliminating fossil fuels, glaciers are now moving faster than politicians.

Speaking of procrastination…

On Thursday I was in parliament for the Speech from the Throne.  The ancient ritual of monarch summoning loyal subjects feels increasingly anachronistic. With the Senate and House no longer under the same roof — with Centre Block shut down for a decade of repairs and upgrades —  the “commoners” from the House of Commons were shuttle-bused to the Royal Chamber. For the first time ever, the Senate desks had been removed and rows of seating for non-Senators brought in. Indigenous leaders, representatives of various sectors, as well as the members of the Senate had seating, while in keeping with tradition, MPs stood in the back behind the bar.

There were really no surprises in the SFT.  As expected, the government’s agenda includes pharmacare (but will it be universal?), action towards reconciliation (UNDRIP, TRC and MMIWG  – how fast? And will it be real this time?), more effective gun control, help for the middle class, 25% cuts in cell phone rates, as well as welcome commitments to expand health care, ensure more family doctors, act for mental health and the opioid crisis.

Climate has never before received so much ink or been placed in the first section of any Speech from the Throne (SFT).  Nevertheless, I found it telling that “climate change” was referenced frequently, but the words “climate emergency” never appeared.

The Liberals’ election commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 was the cornerstone of promises to improve energy efficiency of buildings, promote “clean, affordable power” (why not say “renewable”? worrying language as it might presage nuclear), and promote EVs.  Financial help for victims of climate disasters was also referenced. What was missing was the required immediate action to revise our 2030 target. The reality is that holding to the 2030 target makes carbon neutrality by 2050 a physical impossibility. We need to make this point as clearly and as often as possible.

This parliament will likely develop the legislation to ensure real targets in five year increments, with an independent audit function to ensure we are on track.  What agency will perform that function is a hot topic – should it be the Auditor General? The Environment Commissioner? Or PBO? Critical is that the five year increments start in 2020, not 2030.  The commitment to a Just Transition Act is also key, but, although it was a Liberal election promise, it was not in the SFT.

The best part of the opening of Parliament was that I have Green colleagues! Paul Manly and Janica Atwin are simply fabulous – smart and hard-working. Together this week, working with GPC press secretary, the wonderful Rosie Emery, we hammered out the following press releases and held one joint press conference:

https://www.greenparty.ca/en/media-release/2019-12-04/climate-negotiations-heat-madrid-green-caucus-lays-out-key-climate-tests

https://www.greenparty.ca/en/media-release/2019-12-02/green-party-canada-welcomes-appointment-mark-carney-united-nations-special

https://www.greenparty.ca/en/media-release/2019-12-03/greens-condemn-plan-spend-27-billion-nuclear-reactors

https://www.greenparty.ca/en/media-release/2019-12-05/now-not-time-incrementalism-says-green-party-canada

Having interim leader Jo Ann Roberts with me for the SFT meant that we both got to make points with different journalists.  It feels as though we have achieved success in cloning – TWO Green leaders!

Happily, Paul and Jenica and I are seated with Jody Wilson-Raybould. Jenica sits between Jody and Paul and is pretty pleased about it!  The odd part for me is the new vantage point. Given that the Liberals are now in minority, some of us from the Opposition now sit on the Government side of the House. It means when I get to Question Period, I will be asking questions to the back of the prime minister’s head.

I gave my first short speech of the session, to congratulate our new Speaker, Anthony Rota and Jenica gave her first speech the next day, marking the anniversary of the December 6th massacre of women engineering students at Ecole Polytechnique.

We are a small, but mighty team!

Have a great week – next report – dateline Madrid!

Elizabeth

This weekly blog is published by Elizabeth’s EDA in Saanich-Gulf Islands. You can sign up for it here. 

The post Good Sunday Morning – December 8 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

OTTAWA — The three federal Green MPs have set out the key challenges looming for the Liberal minority government. They fall into two distinct, but related, categories: What positions will Canada take at COP25? And what actions will we take domestically?

Parliamentary Green Leader, Elizabeth May (MP, Saanich-Gulf Islands) will be attending the High Level segment of COP25 opening on Monday December 9.

“Ideally, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should attend COP25, bringing with him new, tougher targets for Canada consistent with the science,” said Ms. May. “Now that Liberals have committed to net zero carbon by 2050, their current 2030 target is untenable. They must ramp up to at least 60% below 2005 levels by 2030.”

“The tough technical negotiations to resolve global carbon markets within Article 6 of Paris must be resolved toward transparency and true reductions. There is a large risk in Article 6 of smoke and mirrors. For example, Canada cannot get credit for fracked gas exports even if it reduces coal burning in China. That is just a shell game of moving GHG emissions from China to Canada with no real global reductions.”

At home, it is time to demonstrate that Canada understands the first rule of holes: if you are in one, stop digging.

Paul Manly (MP, Nanaimo-Ladysmith) noted that it’s critical that the federal Cabinet reject the Frontier Teck oil sands mine. “This enormous mine is only 25 kilometres south of Wood Buffalo National Park. It would cover an area of 24,000 hectares and the Joint Review Panel found that it would permanently destroy thousands of hectares of old growth and wetlands, while violating First Nations rights. Just say no to this climate killing oil sands mine.”

Meanwhile, a key part of the Liberal climate plan, the Clean Fuel Standard, must be revamped. “Before the government publishes in the Canada Gazette, the standard must be toughened and made more inclusive to encourage non-fossil fuel sources. The emerging bio-economy needs to be taken into account,” said Ms. May.

“What we need at home is government leadership that recognises and empowers the countless Canadians on the ground, ready and waiting to shift our communities and our economy toward clean energy and technology,” said Jenica Atwin (MP Fredericton). “Part of this transition will be the ‘Just Transition Act’ which Prime Minister Trudeau committed to during election. Canadians are ready to embrace this shift. What they need to see is leadership.”

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For more information, or to arrange an interview contact:

Rosie Emery
Press Secretary
613-562-4916×206

The post As climate negotiations heat up in Madrid, Green caucus lays out key climate tests for Liberals appeared first on Elizabeth May.