Perusing Copenhagen coverage both in my morning read and in the Washington Post, I see that it’s now agreed — after much to-ing and fro-ing — that Canada and the United States are both proposing to reduce carbon emissions by around 3 per cent relative to 1990 levels. And, last week, Environment Minister Jim Prentice clarified in a letter to the Ottawa Citizen that the government was proposing a hard cap, not intensity targets — though this did not stop the same paper and others from reporting exactly the opposite a few days later.
While aligning our interests with those of the United States would have produced an outcry in the Bush days — even though the Americans are by far our largest trading partner — Canadians for the most part now accept that the government is acting in the national interest. And, in the coming days, as we read reports on the positions of various countries at Copenhagen, we should keep one thing at the back of our minds. Unlike the process that produced the Kyoto protocol, the 192 delegations at Copenhagen will be under firm political control — in many cases by the President or the Prime Minister him or herself. All are sworn to uphold their country’s national interest.
At Copenhagen, developing countries will offer huge reductions in emissions, but at a price — massive financial aid from developed countries. Even China expects others to pay the bill if it is to reduce emissions beyond “business as usual.” That will be a tough sell in the U.S. senate, which will have to ratify any international agreement. Moreover, while the aid that the United States (and Canada) are expected to provide will have an immediate impact on government budgets, the proposed emission reductions are well into the future and will be difficult to verify; nor is it likely that we’ll get our money back with interest if the targets are not met.
As politicians, the negotiators at Copenhagen will also have at least one eye on their respective electoral calendars. This includes leading European leaders, who are far less dependent than we are on trade with the US and whose publics are greatly concerned about climate change. Even China’s leadership must maintain the consent of the governed, which means delivering progressively higher standards of living.
Few politicians, whatever their provenance, are willing to commit hara-kiri on any issue, including on one as important as climate change — particularly when the costs of action are great and the downside of inaction are in the distant future. The exceptions to this rule of politics are normally weeded out at an early stage of the process, as was Stéphane Dion. In this regard, it will be particularly interesting to see how Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd handles the political challenges of legislating climate change reductions.
According to a report in today’s Citizen, Canada will be pushing for a binding international agreement in Copenhagen. Having aligned our policies with those of the United States, any singling out of our country without commensurate criticism of the United States — a much greater emitter than Canada — will be largely political. In this regard, it is to be hoped that opposition politicians and premiers in particular will exercise some reserve in Copenhagen, in light of the potential damage to our reputation and national interests that they could cause.
(Photo: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters)
