British diplomat says Canada overstating progress in climate change fight |
http://www.canada.com/business/British+diplomat+says+Canada+overstating+progress+climate+change+fight/3158138/story.html
OTTAWA — Environment Minister Jim Prentice found himself upstaged on Tuesday, following a speech about cracking down on pollution from coal-fired power plants, as a foreign diplomat suggested the Canadian minister was overstating the big picture about international progress in fighting climate change.
After outlining a plan to regulate the electricity-generating sector and slash heat-trapping emissions and other pollution from coal, Prentice was taken to task by British High Commissioner Anthony Cary for touting a non-binding international climate-change agreement signed last December as a success.
"I think a lot of the international community didn't quite see it that way," Cary told Prentice at a conference about federal energy policies.
Prentice acknowledged that the Copenhagen agreement has its detractors, but argued that it opens the door to tackling emissions from the United States, the world's second-largest source of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere contributing to global warming.
Several countries have criticized the agreement for taking a step back from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, signed in 1997, which was the first global warming agreement to set binding targets for developed countries to slash emissions. The Kyoto agreement was based on a principle that the industrialized world is responsible for most of the pollution that remains in the atmosphere for decades and therefore must act before their counterparts in the developing world.
Prentice noted that a new government has been elected in the United Kingdom and will be expected to define their positions at the international climate-change negotiations.
"We're well aware of their (British government's) position," Prentice said after his speech. "We don't agree on everything, but we've worked very closely together as international allies and I think at the end of the day, there is no doubt that the British government is one of the countries that is formally associated with the Copenhagen accord and so they're moving forward on that basis also."
Meantime, Prentice said the Canadian government could regulate changes in electricity generation without having to wait for others to act since the electricity sector is not integrated with its counterparts in other countries.
Prentice has said the government would not regulate pollution from large industrial facilities unless the United States adopts a similar plan.
But he said the government is now working with Canadian stakeholders to clean up electricity generation.
"There is no dispute that coal is the dirtiest hydrocarbon," Prentice said. "It is a sector where we are focusing our attention, calibrating the needs of Canadian stakeholders with our specific environmental objectives. It is a process that requires careful consideration as well as courage and conviction."
Although he said about 75 per cent of Canada's electricity generation comes from clean or low-emitting sources of energy such as hydro power, he explained that the coal sector still makes up about 13 per cent of Canada's overall greenhouse emissions.
Canada is now responsible for about two per cent of global emissions and is among the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world.
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