A New Term - "Climate Procrastination"

A decade ago, our hopes of a climate emergency "soft landing" depended on slashing greenhouse gas emissions by just over three per cent per year, every year.

Only we didn't do that. We did the opposite. Mankind, particularly its deeply flawed political leadership, procrastinated. We didn't curb our emissions. Some did but not enough to grow overall emissions. Call it 'climate procrastination.'

A decade later, thanks to the growth in emissions, the price of that soft landing has doubled to seven per cent per year, each and every year. Such is the reign of the climate procrastinators.

Yesterday the World Meteorological Organization, WMO, weighed in with a report that we've hit a new high for atmospheric emissions loading, warning that there's no sign of a slow down much less a decline. I decided not to post that because, well, by now it sounds like a broken record, an existential broken record but repetitive in any event. When you've thrown yourself off a cliff what is there to say when you're halfway down? "Oh look, we're halfway to the rocks."

Today's climate crisis greeting comes to you from the United Nations.  Guess what? It'll take more than rigorous emissions cuts if we want that soft landing. Brace yourself. We may have to fall back on geo-engineering.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released its annual Emissions Gap Report on Tuesday — 168 pages, compiled by 57 leading scientists from 33 institutions across 25 countries — calling on governments to act immediately, within the next decade, to limit global warming to 1.5 C or 2 C by 2100. 

"By now, we know all we need to know. The science is pretty clear, and very frightening," said Anne Olhoff, head of strategy, climate and planning and policy at UNEP. "But we also know we have the technological options that are needed, at least to the short to medium term."

So, with our bright eyed and bushy tailed prime minister, where does Canada stand on guard for the world? Do you really need to ask?

Some key highlights from the report include: 

Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) have increased 1.5 per cent annually over the past decade. 

By 2030, annual emissions need to be 15 gigatonnes of CO2 lower to reach the 2 C goal, and 32 gigatonnes lower for 1.5 C. 

GHG emissions have to drop by 2.7 per cent per year from 2020 to 2030 for the 2 C goal, and by 7.6 per cent per year for the 1.5 C target. 

To reach these goals, efforts must increase at least fivefold for the 1.5 C goal and threefold for the 2 C. 

Of the G20 nations, of which Canada is one, only five countries have committed to Nationally Determined Contributions(NDC) set out in the Paris Agreement, which outline each country's efforts to reduce national emissions to limit global warming to 2 C below pre-industrial levels. 

Canada has not committed.

Yes, sadly, Canada has not committed. We've committed instead to building a massive new pipeline to flood world markets with high-carbon, low-value, climate-wrecking bitumen, as much as we can as fast as we can before the worst of the worst fossil fuels become stranded.

In a grotesquely hollow gesture, Mr. Trudeau has pledged that Canada will be carbon neutral by 2050 if only we get an unbroken string of future prime ministers so much better than the current iteration. That rattling noise? That's Mr. Trudeau kicking the can down the road.

The good news? Someone else will be picking up the tab for our lethal carbon profligacy - at least for the first decade or two.

Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Mass., an independent research organization that studies climate change, said that a 3.2 C warming world would cause untold suffering. 

"Looking at migration, [a 3.2 C increase] would make what we're seeing coming out Latin America now into Mexico and into the U.S. look like nothing," Francis said. "There's just going to be people suffering in places where it will become literally uninhabitable, where they won't be able to grow food anymore, where their animals won't be able to live anymore. 

"That's what I worry about the most, the conflict and the misery that's going to happen around the world," she said. "That's what keeps me up at night."

I guess we should apologize.