Climate change is taking a back seat to the federal government’s desire to get re-elected, delegates heard at a conference on climate change and water in the Prairies held last month in Saskatoon.
“Climate change is not going away, it’s like trying to ignore an elephant on the dance floor,” said John Stone, a professor from Carleton University in Ottawa.
He said cuts earlier this year to research programs are viewed in the scientific community as evidence of poor government understanding about climate change and its potential to affect the country’s well-being. He called climate change a threat imposed on the world “by what we have done.
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“We are in uncharted territory,” he said.
Stone said a growing body of evidence is pointing to significant climate change in the next 50 years. In particular, he noted temperature records that have exceeded natural variability.
Government agreements in industrialized nations have sought to lower greenhouse gas emissions but little has changed. In China and India, collective emissions could overtake the developed world’s emissions in the next decade.
“We have not been able to bend that curve downwards,” said Stone.
He said meeting all the targets of the Kyoto Protocol would only delay the doubling of carbon dioxide levels into the atmosphere by a decade at best.
“It is a small step,” he said.
Stone called for a long-term strategy with short term, achievable and realistic goals.
“Greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for a century and can only be tackled with global solutions.”
