The Canadian Press

By Glenn Hicks

climate crisis

UN Climate Change report: Sask. environmentalists bemoan lack of provincial ambition

Aug 9, 2021 | 5:46 PM

Humanity is at a precipice and it’s time to make much bolder moves to cut carbon emissions.

That’s the reaction from Peter Prebble, a director with the Saskatchewan Environmental Society, as the world digests the latest — and dire — report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

‘Code red for humanity’

The report has been labelled ‘a code red for humanity’ by its authors and should signal, according to the UN’s secretary-general, ‘the death knell for coal and fossil fuels.’ It says the Earth is getting so hot that temperatures in about a decade will probably exceed a level of warming that world leaders have been trying to prevent.

Commitments have been made by nations to try to keep temperatures from rising by 1.5 C but that’s now unlikely even with very deep carbon emissions cuts.

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The United Nations has said emissions need to drop by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030 to reach net zero by 2050.

The IPCC report has also raised renewed questions about Canada’s climate plan with a suggestion that countries should end all new fossil fuel exploration and production, and shift fossil fuel subsidies into renewable energy.

“If we don’t act [now], extreme weather events will become much more serious,” Prebble told paNOW. “We’ve got a certain amount of climate change baked in already that we can’t prevent, but there’s a great deal we can still prevent.”

A vote-determining issue?

He said catastrophic weather events can be avoided but only if deep carbon emissions cuts start immediately. Prebble said on a provincial level the government has delayed climate action ‘for far too long’ and the public needs to drive the course of change and pressure government to act.

“Basically, the public needs to say this is a vote-determining issue. If they don’t then politicians will pay less attention to it. People need to say, ‘listen, human civilization and its future is at stake; acting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is critically important to us.’”

Prebble figures not enough people in this province have reached that level of thinking yet.

The provincial government has what it calls ‘a made in Saskatchewan’ climate plan but it has been criticized for not setting specific targets from a baseline for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Green Party of Saskatchewan, Naomi Hunter, says all the other federal parties are simply not ambitious enough with their carbon reduction targets.

“Everyone is still talking about the year 2050 and 35 and 40 per cent [reductions]. Only the Greens are talking about 60 per cent reductions by 2030,” she said.

Federal party reaction to IPCC report

Following the publication of the IPCC report, federal Environment Minister John Wilkinson said the Liberal government has taken “aggressive climate action” through carbon pricing and a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole told reporters that climate change can be addressed while at the same time protecting jobs. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh claims Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has gone easy on big polluters and points to green jobs and technology as essential to solving the climate problem.

‘Living the climate crisis’ this summer

Hunter, who will also run as a federal Green Party candidate in the next election against former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer in Regina-Qu’Apelle, is a Haskap berry farmer in Birch Hills. She said she was ‘living the climate crisis’ this summer. She explained workers were in the orchard before 4 a.m. each day and the harvest was ‘literally cooking in the fruit trays’ it was so hot.

She said humanity is capable of acting quickly to prevent a global crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic is just the latest example of a quick collective effort by nations. She cited the move away from leaded gasoline in the 1990s, and long before that, combatting the Nazis in the Second World War, as other examples of nations unifying for a massive cause.

As for Saskatchewan, Hunter said the provincial government isn’t ambitious enough.

“I want to see a solar panel on every single roof in Saskatchewan. And that’s not unreasonable. We have the best solar gain anywhere in the country.“

With files from The Canadian Press

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glenn.hicks@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @princealbertnow