OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper will now attend the global climate change conference in Copenhagen next month after the leaders of the U.S. and China announced they would come to the meeting with climate change pledges in hand.
The meetings, from Dec. 7 to 18 in the Danish capital, will include delegations from 192 countries, as nations try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
“It’s a very big step forward,” said John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada. “I hope Mr. Harper, in doing this, will grow into the statesman’s role and see he has to do more important things in Canada than protect the oil industry.”
U.S. President Barack Obama will attend Dec. 9, a day before flying to Oslo to collect his Nobel Peace Prize. Obama will lay out the U.S. commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, and 83% by 2050.
Harper’s press secretary, Dimitri Soudas, wouldn’t confirm the dates Harper will attend, although he is visiting China from Dec. 2 to 6, making a stop on the way back a possibility.
The Tory climate change plan, announced in 2008, aims to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 2006 levels by 2020, and 60% to 70% by 2050 — targets close to the U.S. goals.
Both Obama and Harper have said they will commit to their plans if China and other emerging economies agree to similar goals.
On Thursday, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao confirmed he’ll attend and pledged China would cut carbon dioxide emissions 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2020 for each yuan of national income.
Harper will be one of over 60 leaders at the conference, including the heads of Britain, France, Japan, Brazil and Germany.
The news comes as Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff announced his party’s climate change policy promising to abandon a carbon tax in favour of a cap-and-trade system. He also said the Liberals would continue to set 1990 as the base year for reducing emissions rather than 2006, the year set by the Conservatives, or 2005, the year set by China and the U.S.
Meanwhile, the Guardian newspaper in the U.K. reported that Saleemul Huq, an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and some NGOs, want Canada suspended from the Commonwealth because of its poor environmental record.
peter.zimonjic@sunmedia.ca
