Canadian govt set to fall during UN climate conference

Thousands of environmentalists and government officials from around the world were descending on Montreal to brainstorm on how to slow the effects of greenhouse gases and global warming – and likely witness the collapse of the Canadian government.

In a coincidental turn of events that has become a technical nightmare for Environment Minister Stephane Dion, the House of Commons was set to topple Prime Minister Paul Martin’s minority government today, the same day Canada opens the 10-day UN Climate Control Conference to forge new agreements on cutting poisonous emissions from the atmosphere.

The opposition parties have enough votes to bring down Martin’s Liberal government – seizing on a corruption scandal within his party – which means Dion and other Cabinet ministers could be forced to forego the conference and instead hit Canada’s intensely short campaign trail for national elections in January.

The UN Conference, with some 10,000 participants from 180 nations, is considered the most important gathering on climate change since 140 nations ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

That landmark agreement, negotiated in Japan’s ancient capital of Kyoto, targets carbon dioxide and five other gases that can trap heat in the atmosphere, and are believed to be behind the rising global temperatures that many scientists say are disrupting weather patterns.

The treaty went into effect in February and calls on industrialised nations to dramatically cut their gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. The conference that opens today will set new agreements on how much more emissions should be cut after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires, though most signatories are already falling far short on their targets.

The Kyoto accord was delayed by the requirement that countries accounting for 55% of the world’s emissions must ratify it. That goal was finally reached - nearly seven years after the pact was negotiated – with Russia’s approval last year.

The US, the world’s largest emitter of such gases, has refused to ratify the agreement, saying it would harm the US economy and is flawed by the lack of restrictions on emissions by emerging economic powers such as China and India.

Kyoto calls on the world’s top 35 industrialised countries to cut carbon dioxide and other gas emissions by 5.2% below their 1990 levels by 2012.

The targets for cuts vary by region: The European Union initially committed to cutting emissions to 8% below 1990 levels by 2012; the US agreed to a 7% reduction before President George Bush denounced the pact in 2001, saying it would cost far too much and exacerbate an already bothersome energy problem for the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels.

The European Union appears to be taking the lead, endorsing a plan in June to bring emissions of greenhouses gases down 15% to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020.

The conference comes as a team of European researchers recently determined there is now more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – a major contributor to greenhouse gases – than at any point in the last 650,000 years, despite decades of efforts to curb the choking emissions. The study by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica and published earlier this month in the journal Science, analysed tiny air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice for millennia.

Earth’s average temperature, meanwhile, has increased about 1 degree Fahrenheit in recent decades, a relatively rapid rise. Many climate specialists warn that continued warming could have severe impacts, such as rising sea levels and changing rainfall patterns, variations already devastating ancient communities and wildlife, such as the Inuit and polar bears of Canada’s far north-eastern climes.

Sceptics sometimes dismiss the rise in greenhouse gases as part of a naturally fluctuating cycle.

The new study provides ever-more definitive evidence countering that view, however.

Deep Antarctic ice encases tiny air bubbles formed when snowflakes fell over hundreds of thousands of years. Extracting the air allows a direct measurement of the atmosphere at past points in time, to determine the naturally fluctuating range.

A previous ice-core sample had traced greenhouse gases back about 440,000 years. This new sample, from East Antarctica, goes 210,000 years further back in time.

Today’s rising level of carbon dioxide already is 27 per cent higher than its peak during all those millennia, said lead researcher Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern, Switzerland.

The Kyoto Protocol also requires governments to start negotiations now to set new commitments for lower greenhouse gas emissions after 2012.

Another topic at the conference will be technology, with a special focus on the capture and storage of carbon.

“Technology has to be at the centre of the global response to climate change,” said Halldor Thorgeirsson of the UN climate change secretariat. “The challenge is getting existing technologies into the market, developing new ones and ensuring technologies are transferred to developing countries to promote their sustainable development.”