When business as usual means suicide
Canada is in the middle of climate emergency, acknowledged the House of Commons in a vote that passed by 186 votes to 63↗︎ last June. To meet this emergency, Canada needs to cut its carbon emissions by at least 10 per cent — roughly 71 million tons — by the end of 2020. And we need another 10-per-cent cut by the end of 2021 and every year thereafter. That’s what it would take to get our emissions to zero by 2050, as the federal government pledged↗︎ to do at the UN climate talks in Madrid earlier this month — a 61-67 per cent decrease in emissions by 2030.
Despite our international obligation to cut emissions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, Canada’s carbon emissions have bounced up and down between 700 and 740 million tons↗︎ per year in the 2o odd years since. Only the 2008 recession saw them briefly dip below 700 million tons. Now we have to get to 645 million tons by the end of 2020.
This stark reality ought to be a OMG moment for Canadians — if they knew about it. Just as doing business as usual in Canada is absurd in an emergency situation, so is doing journalism as usual.