Alberta's climate change plan gets bouquets from top UN official

The top United Nations official offered bouquets to Alberta's NDP government, leaving some bricks for climate doubters as he addressed a crowd of students in the heart of Canada's oilpatch.

Speaking at the University of Calgary, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a shift to a low carbon economy was inevitable and that the time for climate change denial was over.

Ban's message comes at a time when Alberta's NDP government finds itself under attack from two right-leaning opposition parties that are opposed to its aggressive plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions in the oil-rich province. The country's largest oil lobby group, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, has also questioned the need for aggressive climate action at times, noting that it has still not resulted in approval of any new pipeline infrastructure to help struggling producers, hammered by slumping global oil prices, deliver their crude to new markets.

“There have been many skeptics, deniers and critics of why we have to take climate change so seriously. Now, [the question of] whether climate change is happening or not, that debate is over. That debate is surely over," Moon told a crowd of about 350 people, gathered on International Youth Day.

Ban, who met with government officials and First Nations leaders before his speech, also applauded Canada's work toward sustainable development, saying that indigenous peoples are integral in tackling global warming.

Ban said he is encouraged that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has committed that Canada will ratify the Paris climate change accord negotiated late last year, an agreement that requires countries to keep global temperatures well below a two degrees Celsius increase above pre-industrial levels. He also said that shifting to a low carbon economy shouldn’t hurt employment, and that “the leaders of Alberta understood this even before the Paris agreement.”

And he praised Alberta’s “serious steps to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Under the province’s climate change plan, Alberta will price carbon at $30 per-tonne by 2018 and phase-out coal-fired electricity production by 2030.

His visit comes at a time when the Trudeau government is seeking a more active role with the international community.

Moon also addressed youth unemployment and security concerns alongside climate change as major challenges facing young people today.

According to the UN, 75-million youth are currently unemployed. Moon said that Canada’s young entrepreneurs should invent the jobs of the future, adding that “every successful entrepreneur climbed to the top on a stack of failures. The trick is to keep climbing.”

“Youth can do more than find jobs. They can create them.”

Moon also issued a challenge to the crowd, calling on young people to push politicians to acknowledge their concerns, and to “prove to them that youth are not a liability," but an opportunity.