Published in Behind the Headlines (Feb. 7, 2008)
Abstract
The recent UN climate conference in Bali concluded with governments adopting the "Bali Roadmap" - a mandate for negotiating, by the end of 2009, a new global agreement to combat climate change after 2012. But confidence in the environmental effectiveness of the agreement to be negotiated is undermined by the vagueness of the Roadmap text relating to the U.S. and developing countries. The Bali Roadmap does include a call for an aggregate reduction in industrialized countries' emissions to 25-40% below the 1990 level by 2020, in line with climate science. But Canada's domestic targets and policies fall woefully short of this standard and will need to be dramatically strengthened for Canada to play a responsible part in the Bali Roadmap negotiations.
The full op-ed, one of two articles published in Behind the Headlines can be downloaded here.
Matthew Bramley was with the Pembina Institute from 2000 to 2011, serving as director of the climate change program and director of research.
