Fool Me Once...

 

A splendid speech by Justin Trudeau at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Lots of promises. He's really, really good at those. We signed on to end deforestation. We're in on Biden's methane initiative.  A cap on emissions from the fossil fuel producers (I don't think that's new) and the biggie, Net Zero by 2050. I must have missed him promising to cut Canadian GHG emissions by 50 per cent by 2030. 

Great stuff. Lots of promises. Now, if only.

Define "deforestation." I think to most of us the word brings to mind logging.  The workaround to that is reforestation, tree planting. Timber farming. There are other forms of deforestation. These are forest die-offs from drought, pests and fires. Without enough cold weather in winter we experience pine beetle infestations. Those pests kill vast tracts of forests, leaving them tinder for fires. Forests, even the mighty Sequoia, are being hammered by heatwaves and drought.  The pine beetles have crossed the Rockies and entered the Boreal forest, heading ever eastward.

Climate change has transformed Canada's mighty forests from an historic carbon sink into today's carbon bomb.  Dead trees don't absorb carbon. As they're destroyed by fire or rot the carbon they once sequestered is released back to the atmosphere. 

The methane pact is welcome news. Fracking is a common source of fugitive emissions. A lot of methane gets lost during natural gas extraction and transmission. Odorless, colourless and tasteless, it's been hard to detect especially in remote, inaccessible areas. Fortunately there's a new satellite system designed to spot methane plumes on Earth's surface.  The problem is that engineering and policing natural gas operations to eliminate emissions ain't cheap.  We'll have to see how effective this pact will turn out to be.

Capping oil patch emissions is, well, a sop. The science is in and we know that preventing catastrophic warming depends on most of the high carbon, low value fossil fuels being "left in the ground." There are two main culprits - coal and bitumen. I don't recall the Dauphin mentioning that. 

Then there's the real show of good faith - cutting national emissions by 50% by 2030. It doesn't sound like Canada is on board for that.  According to Environment Canada we're certainly not on course to make that target in any case. The Trudeau Liberals have been at the helm for six years now and they've got a record and that record isn't encouraging. In fairness, Canada will have plenty of company. Years from now we'll all be laughing about this, right?

As for the Net Zero by 2050, we know that emission promises are devilishly hard to keep without mandatory targets. If all you've got are sincere promises you've got nothing. Even someone as sincere as our prime minister has proven that - repeatedly.

I may be cynical but probably for good reason.  These climate summits focus excessively on mitigation. We need some parallel organization for when the other shoe drops - adaptation. These are Herculean commitments being made but those promises are only as good as each nation's ability to deliver. 

Even if we eliminated all GHG emissions today, the climate is going to worsen. Without adaptation these climate impacts will disrupt the ability of some nations to deliver on those promises. There will be too many competing priorities. Internal population displacement (migration), failing infrastructure and especially power grids, food insecurity, pest and disease migration. 

We're making these promises in a 2021 context. 2031 may look a lot different. Even democracy may be a hurdle now that we think and vote on a short-term outlook.  We're counting on an enormous number of factors going right, a lot of things remaining constant in a time of upheaval.