“We are ending up with something so watered down there was no need for 12,000 people to gather here in Bali to have a watered-down text. We could have done that by email.” — Dr. Angus Friday, Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States
In a narrow and formal sense, last month’s Climate Change conference in Bali achieved its objectives. The Kyoto Protocol is due to expire in 2012: the Bali gathering’s purpose was to adopt a roadmap for negotiating a new treaty — and that was done. A new roadmap, called the Bali Action Plan, was adopted unanimously at an overtime session, after the USA withdrew its objections.
As the New York Times pointed out, the dramatic U.S. capitulation really didn’t amount to much: “From the United States the delegates got nothing, except a promise to participate in the forthcoming negotiations.”1
That’s why the Bali meetings were a failure in any meaningful sense. They didn’t even discuss the Kyoto Protocol’s failure to produce results, failed to recognize the need for rapid action, and above all failed to adopt (or even recommend) any targets for emission reductions. The final resolution might better be called the Bali Inaction Plan — at best it is an agreement to discuss further, and maybe agree in 2009 on measures that might be implemented after 2012.
The Natural Resources Defence Council is a pretty credible environmental organization, which last week appealed to North American airlines to swear off dirty sources of jet fuel, including the Alberta tar sands.”An area the size of Florida could be directly affected by strip mining and drilling for the tar-like substance that is cracked to make oil. … Also at risk is Alberta’s northern boreal forest, the largest terrestrial storehouse of climate regulating carbon and the nesting ground for millions of songbirds and waterfowl,” the council wrote to 15 airlines, including Air Canada and WestJet. It asks them to buy more fuel-efficient planes, seek shorter routes and haul their planes around on the ground using electricity rather than jet fuel.
The battle between oil exploration and its inevitable environmental impact is coming to loggerheads in the Great White North, as proceedings in a federal court in Alberta begin tomorrow to determine whether a new oil sands field met critical environment requirements.
The judicial review, currently scheduled to last four days, is over the Kearl Tar Sands project, part of one of the second largest proven oil reserves in the world. It’s located in the Alberta region, about 70 km north of Fort McMurray, and is ultimately expected to produce 300,000 barrels of bitumen, the heavy oil recovered from oil-sands deposits, a day.
Exxon Mobil Corp.-owned Imperial Oil, Canada’s largest petroleum company, is facing allegations that it has not sufficiently game-played the degree and the length of time to which the project could adversely impact the surrounding environment and that a government panel last year was wrong when it said the company had.
