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Japan and Canada – Climate Change Foot Draggers

By Paul K. Haeder

Why are Japan and Canada dragging their feet in regard to climate change and the upcoming Dec. 15, 2009 Copenhagen summit? The Climate Scorecard by the Group of Eight nations preparing for the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, July 6-12, 2009, ranked Canada and Japan low. Canada agreed under Kyoto to reduce CO2 emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. However, 2007 data show that Canada is 26 percent higher.

“They have increased emissions and absolutely no policies in place,” said Nicholai Tewes, a spokesman for Allianz, a German insurance group, and one of the report’s authors along with WWF.

Japan ranked fifth on the Climate Scorecard, even though it has a relatively low emissions rate per capita. Japan has failed to meet or try to meet targets that it had previously set for itself. Global economic meltdown has created a mindset within Japan and many nations’ collective psyches that now is the time for outright resource plundering and forward inertia to start up as much industry and capital venture possible. Green Jobs and green energy and sustainable development and environmental planning, well, we shall see what come of Climate Change summits and policy setting. Yet Japan is certainly a leader in hybrid and electric automobile development and transitioning to green energy.

We still must take our neighbors to north as an example of bifurcated logic and two worldviews. There has always been a belief that Canada has done better with its rivers, forests, air, land and peoples, as well as managing its ecosystems. Heck there was a robust movement to get Sustainability guru David Suzuki on the ticket for prime minister. Yet Canada is one of the bad boys for reneging on climate change forward motion. Canada is shaping up to be a pretty destructive state – a majority of the world’s mines worldwide are owned or operated by Canadian companies or subsidiaries. Mining worldwide is one of the largest culturally and socially contentious issues of our times, as well as one that ties directly into land and resource destruction as well as pollution. Canada is the world's largest exporter of minerals and metals -- leading producer and exporter of potash (world's largest and richest reserves), the leading supplier of uranium, the second-largest producer of asbestos (possibly the largest deposits) and sulfur (17% of world output and 38% of world trade), the third-largest in titanium, platinum-group metals (PGMs) and mine zinc, fourth in aluminum (from imported oxide), fifth in copper, lead, silver, and gold, and among the leading producers of nickel, salt, and nitrogen in ammonia. Canada’s ecological footprint – its carbon footprint, more precisely -- is one of the highest worldwide. Add to that huge swaths of Canada’s primary forests being cut down and the notorious tar sands of Alberta gobbling up huge supplies of natural gas, water and embedded energy, as well as the air, water and land pollution generated in the process.

Let’s consider the top CO2 (total GHG equivalent) emitters (see chart below). This is not the same measuring stick as the elegant Ecological Footprint, which will be discussed in this blog soon. Consider the other nations as part of the G77 -- a negotiating group representing 132 developing countries – and the fact that most of them are well below, collectively, the G8’s total GHG emissions. Brazil, China and India will become major emitters of greenhouse gases as their economic engines start firing away on all 12 cylinders. BRIC – Brazil, Russian India and China – is another economic engine that seems to be generating print as the up and coming economic powerhouse block that will surpass the USA and EU/Japan/Australia as economic firebrands. With that economic growth potential comes consumption, energy use and pollution, including C02 emissions and pollution in not only their own respective countries but those to be exploited, where the fuel for BRIC’s economies will be mined, refined, bottled and sent home.

It’s imperative something comes of the Copenhagen climate summit. Real action, that is. This is what the Times Online says about the summit’s potential for floundering dictums and toothless provisos:

Copenhagen is faltering at the moment. The Americans are now fully engaged. But several countries are blocking the progress,” Sir David King, former British Chief Scientific Advisor, said at the World Conference of Science Journalists in London.

He also noted that both Canada and Japan have recently gotten rid of their scientific advisors, and both countries “are stepping into the breach and blocking progress.”

A weak agreement coming out of the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen this December would be worse than no agreement, said Sir David King. According to Times Online he sees an ambitious bilateral agreement between China and the United States as a better alternative:

“If you had the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and (Barack) Obama on the same stage, together with the EU position, this would be a strong move in the right direction.”

More reason to delve deeply into the ramifications of the following chart of major global emitters of greenhouse gasses.

from Union of Concerned Scientists –

Each Country's Share of CO2 Emissions

The world's countries contribute different amounts of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere. The table below shows data compiled by the Energy Information Agency (Department of Energy), which estimates carbon dioxide emissions from all sources of fossil fuel burning and consumption. Here we list the 20 countries with the highest carbon dioxide emissions (data are for 2006).

	Country	Total Emissions (Million metric tons of CO2)	Per Capita Emissions (Tons/capita)
1.	China	6017.69	4.58
2.	United States	5902.75	19.78
3.	Russia	1704.36	12.00
4.	India	1293.17	1.16
5.	Japan	1246.76	9.78
6.	Germany	857.60	10.40
7.	Canada	614.33	18.81
8.	United Kingdom	585.71	9.66
9.	South Korea	514.53	10.53
10.	Iran	471.48	7.25
11.	Italy	468.19	8.05
12.	South Africa	443.58	10.04
13.	Mexico	435.60	4.05
14.	Saudi Arabia	424.08	15.70
15.	France	417.75	6.60
16.	Australia	417.06	20.58
17.	Brazil	377.24	2.01
18.	Spain	372.61	9.22
19.	Ukraine	328.72	7.05
20.	Poland	303.42	7.87

The picture that emerges from these figures is one where—in general—developed countries and major emerging economy nations lead in total carbon dioxide emissions. Developed nations typically have high carbon dioxide emissions per capita, while some developing countries lead in the growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions. Obviously, these uneven contributions to the climate problem are at the core of the challenges the world community faces in finding effective and equitable solutions.

We’ll see if Tewes is correct in assessing Barak Obama’s moves toward climate change progress. The US placed last in the 2008 Climate Scorecard rankings, but gets to move up a notch this year. The US accounts for half the total emissions of G8 countries -- France, United States, Britain, Germany, Japan and Italy, Canada and Russia -- yet Tewes lauded the US for its rapid turnaround in policy: “Obama has done more for climate change in the last six months than the US did in the last three decades.”