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Protesters briefly disrupted traffic outside the main gates to the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, on Monday to highlight the refusal of Canada and the U.S. to block new oil and gas projects.
About 30 protesters organized by U.S. environmental group Build Back Fossil Free gathered outside the tall metal fences guarding the entrance to the Scottish Events Centre where the leaders of both countries later highlighted their climate policies. Among the group were representatives of those most impacted by major fossil fuel projects and infrastructure, including the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline and the Alberta tar sands.
Complex travel requirements, soaring costs for accommodation and travel, and strict COVID-19-related capacity limits in the main conference venue have also raised concerns about the conference's accessibility for representatives from low-income communities most impacted by climate change.
"We're here as the original people of the US to denounce the polluters' conference," said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. "It's not a climate conference — it's been taken over by corporate interests."
For Goldtooth, Biden's decisions to continue investing in fossil fuels despite pledging to take a firm stance on ending the climate crisis amount "broken promises."
The climate conference — also known as COP, short for Conference of Parties — brings the world together to hammer out deals to reduce global warming. The talks gather policymakers, scientists, environmental activists, climate experts, and media from the 197 member countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden spoke Monday during the two-day leaders' summit. Both leaders highlighted their governments' efforts to address the climate crisis.
According to a report released by the U.N. Environment Program ahead of the conference, pledges from all countries to reduce emissions fall far short of the cuts necessary to keep global temperatures in a safe range. Globally, current government plans would lead to the extraction of about 57 per cent more oil and 71 per cent more gas than needed to keep global warming to the 1.5 C limit agreed upon in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Canada and the U.S.'s pledges also fall short.
Goldtooth and other speakers said their promises do little to address decades of environmental injustices related to fossil fuel production and petrochemical manufacturing. Indigenous and other marginalized communities tend to be disproportionately impacted by environmental harm.
Comments
Will someone please provide a comparison of kilometers of fossil-fuel pipelines ( approved and built in Canada and the US over the last ten years - other major producing nations if available) to put this issue in perspective.
CoP - out reporting is boring and predictable. Just change the date and the storyline sadly remains the same!
https://energyminute.ca/single/infographics/1120/pipelines-in-2021
Not a complete answer but it's a start?
"...plans would lead to the extraction of about 57 per cent more oil and 71 per cent more gas than needed to keep global warming to the 1.5 C limit agreed upon..."
I'm sorry but this wording is splay-legged and makes it seem like oil and gas is needed to limit emissions. I know the point is to say we are exceeding already catastrophic production levels. And let's remember that it is demand that drives production and combustion of that production that is the other elephant in the room. Is there another way to express?
"it is demand that drives production and combustion of that production that is the other elephant in the room."
That's THE elephant in the room. Change your life style. For an example of this effective, Suncor is installing charging stations at its gas outlets so as to keep the business of supplying energy to autos.
In Ontario? Bet not: Dougie'd rip 'em out, like he did so many climate green measures when he got elected.
Of course the pig-dirty polluters will take more government money, to maintain energy shares. Quite aside from carbon taxes.
I'm disgusted that Trueau's getting away with posing as a climate hero, given that he's not charging the polluters at all: he's passing on pollution costs to people who don't have real choices. That means the huge proportion of the population living low on the income scale.
If there was any real intention to reduce consumption, the first X number of units of consumption would cost less than above average use. But that's not what energy price structures look like: they all favor the big users and big polluters. Water price structures too. And garbage removal pricing structures.
AFAIK, there's no carbon tax on beef and cow dairy products either, and I wonder why not.
I wonder, too, how "climate saving" those over-processed, artificial meat-like products are, and what nutritional deficits and imbalances they have (other than the first one, with a very bad B-vitamin profile).
Health Canada and dieticians need to include those products in their examples of highly-processed foodstuffs. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong with vegie products that taste like the ingredients the're made of. It takes only a very short time to transition, and just like with leaving excessively sweet or salty things behind, the taste of the "old stuff" soon becomes quite unpalatable.
This kind of grammar shows up regularly, and I wonder if it's because writers are using voice-to-print software, and don't bother checking what they've written. You can't count on software to do what secretaries used to do.
This time, I'm just not going to e-mail the editor with a correction, because it's not an "educate the software" issue: it's just sloppy work.
The problem with this particular one is more and more common in online print: it lies to the liking of carbon fuel extraction fans.