JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 ISSUE
Downunder Turns
Right Side Up on Kyoto
Australia’s new government has left Harper and Bush government more isolated than ever on the issue of global climate change.
A late November national election delivered a large majority to Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party, ending eleven years of conservative Liberal Party rule. Former Prime Minister John Howard lost his seat to journalist Maxine McKew – Howard had held the riding for 33 years.
One of Rudd’s first actions as PM was to act on an election promise to ratify the Kyoto Accord. This move left the USA as the only major polluter in the world not to sign the international treaty. Canada of course has signed and ratified the Kyoto, but has failed to make progress on its commitments over the past two governments and is
currently backtracking.
Australia has suffered several years of drought this past decade and climate change inevitably emerged as a major theme in this election. Climate-challenged governments in Washington and Ottawa should pay attention.
Bali Climate Summit: What Comes After the Kyoto?
An estimated 10,000 representatives from almost every country in the world met in Bali this past December to answer that very question. The Kyoto Accord was the first international treaty to deal with the problem of human produced atmospheric gases. Targets in that treaty were modest, largely only affected industrialized economies, and have since proved challenging to enforce.
Fifteen years later, awareness of the issue has grown and most humans are now seeing the first signs of global climate change. Government actions have not kept pace.While some countries have met or will meet their Kyoto commitments (Germany, UK), other countries are balking (Canada), or have simply not bothered (USA).
Adding to the diplomatic complexity of climate change, countries such as China and India have exploded into large modern and highly polluting economies in a very short time. As global wealth is now interconnected, it’s hard to say where one country’s economy ends and another country’s begins.
After two weeks of intense, frustrating and dramatic negotiations in Bali, some broad agreements have been reached. All of the governments present at the summit accepted that the science of global warming is unequivocal and that delays in reducing emissions will have severe consequences.
For the first time, there are no more climate change deniers left on the global stage. Even the USA signed on to the process in the end.
The bad news is that are no CO2 targets established yet. Those will have to be decided at a succession of summits over the next two years. While disappointing, this was to be expected as the point of the Bali meetings was to find areas of agreement and to map out the areas to be negotiated. Further negotiations will also cover the pillars of mitigation – including deforestation, adaptation, “green” technology and financial aid to developing economies.
The next two years will be crucial in addressing this
critical issue and it will certainly be the diplomatic
challenge of our day.
Nuclear Medicine
Malpractice in Ottawa?
 The Harper government has overruled Canada’s nuclear safety regulator and ordered an aging nuclear facility back online, despite recommendations that it be retooled
and upgraded.
Chalk River Laboratories, located northwest of Ottawa, is a major site for the production of medical radioisotopes. It is a part of the crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada. The 50 year old reactor was shut down in mid-November for scheduled maintenance, but its offline status was extended to install long overdue new equipment including upgrades to the cooling pumps needed to avoid the risk of a meltdown.
The facility is North America’s only source of isotopes that are used in the field of nuclear medicine. These radioactive
isotopes have a very short shelf life and are used in a variety of medical procedures, including tests for cancer and heart disease. Unlike x-rays, patients are injected with the isotopes which are then detected by a camera.
Faced with a sudden shortage and millions of delayed cancer tests across North America, the Harper government faced down a storm of criticism in Parliament and ordered the facility back online in 120 days. Unfortunately, this will force the facility to use backup safety systems, which the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) says is unsafe.
Greenpeace’s nuclear campaigner Shawn-Patrick Stensil adds “The CNSC is typically a lap dog to nuclear industry. When it says a reactor should be shut down, there is clearly a significant threat to public safety.”
At least one critic said that there is no isotope crisis and that contingency supply plans from Europe and South Africa have always been in place. It seems that the issue may ultimately be a question of revenue.
The White House’s Red Pencil
A report that surfaced in the US House of Representatives in December 2007 accused the Bush administration of systematically censoring and suppressing climate change
information.
“The Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming,” said the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The committee found that the White House censored climate change scientists and the White House extensively edited climate change reports so as to create uncertainty as to the validity of the science, as well as to minimize the threat to the
environment and the economy. As well the Bush administration was “particularly active in stifling discussions” of a potential link between climate change and the intensity of hurricanes.
The committee spent sixteen months investigating allegations of political interference, obtaining over 27,000 pages of documents from the White House and the Commerce Department, holding two investigative hearings and
interviewing key officials.
The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the main investigative committee in the US House of Representatives. It has jurisdiction to investigate any federal program and any matter with federal policy implications and as such is one of the most influential and powerful bodies in the US Congress.
www.oversight.house.gov
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