Sign onto KyotoPlus

I encourage everyone to sign the Kyotoplus petition.  Then go and get your friends all over Canada to sign it, too.

As I’ve become a candidate, I was worried that I couldn’t do more to help the Kyotoplus coalition, which is an extremely vital component in the battle against climate change.  I’ve now started campaigning door-to-door with my new postcard, which I’ll introduce online soon, and I’m carrying the Kyotoplus petition with me and urging every Toronto-Danforth resident to sign on, no matter what party they support.  It’s the least I can do.

Kyotoplus is an umbrella organization bringing together diverse groups into one, united call for strong action on climate change from the Canadian government in the post-Kyoto period, now being negotiated at international climate conferences.  The group now includes major Canadian environmental organizations (Greenpeace, Sierra Club, David Suzuki Foundation), many regional environmental organizations, many organizations working for climate action (like the Climate Action Network, the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, East Toronto Climate Action Group, JustEarth and many others), KAIROS (the ecumenical justice organization which includes the Anglican, Catholic, United, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Mennonite, and other churches), Oxfam, Science for Peace, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Ontario College of Family Physicians and many, many other organizations.  Prior to the 2008 federal election, all three leaders of opposition parties in Parliament (Stephane Dion, Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton) signed the Kyotoplus politician’s pledge.

Because the group aims for breadth, it calls for bare minimum standards that virtually everyone agrees must be met (emissions reductions in the range of 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020).  Indeed, climate scientists now specifying a target for stabilized atmospheric emissions of 350 ppm (which is substantially below today’s levels of about 390 ppm) would almost certainly view the Kyotoplus demands as inadequate.

The specific demands of the petition are not based on hard science but on the international political consensus, which coalesced around these numbers at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali in 2007.  At that conference, there was a moment when every Kyoto signatory nation was demanding reductions in that range except Canada, which was obstinately refusing to agree to make those kind of cuts.  The breakthrough in negotiations involved making the target range a non-binding aim, and Canadian negotiators left the conference immediately informing the media that Canada had no intention of ever being bound to targets in the range they had just agreed to work towards.

The specific targets to which Kyoto signatory nations will be bound to in the post-Kyoto period will be established at the next COP in Copenhagen this December.  We have only a few months to lobby the Canadian government to do what science demands.  Because the negotiation process requires consensus, Canada’s obstinacy could well result in the derailment of global climate negotiations to the detriment of the planet.  The ability of the Earth to continue to sustain us is literally threatened by Canada’s stand.