by Ben Block

Photo courtesy USFWS

The Canadian government didn’t win many fans at December’s Copenhagen climate summit. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s administration staunchly opposed further emissions restrictions on his country, despite Canada’s failure to meet its Kyoto Protocol commitment of cutting fossil fuel emissions 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008–12. Instead, domestic emissions escalated further.

Canada’s new target of reducing emissions 3 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 51–63 percent by 2050 is insufficient to prevent climate change from permanently altering the country’s northern backyard. Last week, the Arctic Council announced in its Arctic Species Trend Index, which the Canadian government funded, that High Arctic vertebrate species declined 26 percent between 1970 and 2004. Populations in more southern and marine Arctic ecosystems have experienced less dramatic changes, but climate change is clearly threatening the survival of polar wildlife, including in Canada. Arctic species are expected to be displaced as more southerly species encroach into warmer northern habitats, and polar ice melt threatens to further shrink Arctic habitats.

Harper’s administration seems increasingly uncommitted to supporting climate science. Its 2010 budget withholds funds to the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, a move that may reduce university-based climate science research by half, according to Climate Action Network (CAN) Canada. Government climate experts have been discouraged from speaking directly with the news media. And perhaps most disturbing,

by Thomas Kleine‐Brockhoff

FACET Commentary No. 24 – January 2010

It has only been a few years since the Europeans – suffering under what they felt to be the yoke of George Bush – longed for a multipolar world. No one expressed this sentiment more eloquently than former French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin. He envisioned a world in which the “international community” would direct all of its energy into building “a new world order.” Better than the unipolar order, this “world of cooperation” would help “every nation to mobilize” in the shared interests of all. At the most recent UN Climate Conference, the nature of this new world order became apparent. [READ FULL TEXT]

by Christopher Flavin

FACET Commentary No. 23 – December 2009

President Obama’s speech in Copenhagen last Friday included a line that few who had spent the past two weeks listening to bickering negotiators would disagree with: “While the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest, I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now and it hangs in the balance.” Also hanging in the balance is the habitability of the planet. The Copenhagen conference did not come close to setting the world on a path to stabilizing the climate (…) While it is tempting to respond to the near collapse in Copenhagen with a combination of anger and despair, neither will lead to the result that we and others believe is urgently needed: the transition to a low‐carbon economy in the decades immediately ahead. [READ FULL TEXT]

by Wolfgang Gründinger

FACET Commentary No. 22 – October 2009

A recent poll by the popular German youth magazine Bravo (2009) brought to light: Our young people are not politically apathetic. In fact, the opposite is true: They show that they have a much better feeling for the urgency of issues than some wise experts. In a representative poll of more than 1,000 children and teenagers, 89 percent of respondents stated that climate change and environmental pollution pose the most important threat – more important than the financial crisis, violence at school, or terrorism. For today’s youth, the environment is priority number one on the political agenda. [READ FULL TEXT ON  COMMENTARIES PAGE]