Nathan Cullen sees more work ahead for Canada’s efforts to reduce global warming, following his time at the United Nations conference on climate change in Paris.
“Canada has been playing a much more positive role, than the previous government certainly,” he said. However he felt that there were a few things that were still on the table and had not been totally worked out.
“Indigenous rights and title is becoming a bigger issue. That is something that we have encouraged our government to put into the text. Some other countries like Saudi Arabia and some of the Asian states are resisting. But we will see what comes out.” At the time of a teleconference with Northwest media, Mr. Cullen was just leaving the Paris summit and already had plans to hold Canada to its commitments.
“There was a good commitment (from Canada) to keep the world from heating up above one and half degrees. But there is no goal associated to it, and that is going to be really important; as well as seeing a plan from the government of Canada and we will be doing that when we get back to Canada we are doing that with the Provinces,” Mr.Cullen said.
The Paris conference, was held from November 30 to December 11. The conference was considered crucial because the expected outcome is a new international agreement on climate change, applicable to all, to keep global warming below a 2°C temperature rise.
B.C. Primer Christy Clark and the B.C Minister of Environment Mary Polak were both in the Paris and had asked to have LNG exempt from any budget for carbon, in the province.
Mr. Cullen called the proposal a “non starter.”
“It is still Carbon,” he said. “Canada has made commitments to cut the amount of carbon coming out of our country and if they are going to exempt LNG then B.C. will have to make up for it huge ways somewhere else. I don’t think B.C. has a clue on how that will work.”
According to the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global warming of more than two degrees celsius would have serious consequences, such as an increase in the number of extreme climate events. In Copenhagen in 2009, the countries stated their determination to limit global warming to two degrees celsius between now and 2100. To reach this target, climate experts estimate that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions need to be reduced by 40-70 per cent by 2050 and that carbon neutrality (zero emissions) needs to be reached by the end of the century at the latest.
