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Protesters turn up heat on climate change issue
News Articles | The StarPhoenix | Canwest | August 07, 2009
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About 20 protesters sprawled across the sidewalk outside of Government House as premiers arrived for the Council of the Federation meeting.
Dressed in black with their hands painted blood red, the group lay down beside a banner declaring that the country is “dying for climate leadership.” At times, they began chanting, with their voices carrying over to where premiers stopped to answer questions from reporters.
Greenpeace climate and energy co-ordinator David Martin blasted Alberta for its oilsands developments and provincial intensity-based emission reduction targets.
He also criticized Saskatchewan for adopting legislation to reduce emissions 20 per cent below 2006’s mark by 2020, in line with Ottawa’s target. The plan to use 2006 levels is far off the 1990 base year several other jurisdictions are using, Martin said.
“Alberta and Saskatchewan can’t expect the rest of the country to pay the freight for their greenhouse gas emissions,” Martin said.
Several groups also held a noon-hour rally in front of the Legislative Building, where Saskatchewan Environmental Society spokesperson Peter Prebble, a former provincial NDP cabinet minister, accused Canada of acting like a rogue nation by trying to negotiate watered-down climate change targets and by setting its own targets in violation of its signed commitment to the Kyoto Protocol.
Outside the premiers’ meeting, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall again defended his government’s investments in technology in areas such as clean coal, despite the fact the province hasn’t endorsed the cap-and-trade system several other provinces are actively backing.
Money generated by caps on emissions must fund technological solutions such as clean coal, or else it’s just a plan to transfer wealth, Wall said.
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, a favoured target for environmentalists, says he doesn’t feel his province is isolated when talks turn to climate change. He contended his province has shown leadership with a levy requiring big emitters to pay into a technology fund if they don’t reduce their carbon emissions by a specific amount each year.
Some other premiers reiterated their support for cap-and-trade but didn’t join the environmentalists in slamming their two western counterparts.
“We can all expect a lot more people to speak to the issue of climate change as we move closer and closer to the conference in Copenhagen,” international climate talks, said Quebec Premier Jean Charest, who called cap-and-trade inevitable.
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Tagged with: climate change, greenpeace, ed stelmach
