Canada’s climate targets too low, UN report says

OTTAWA — Canada would have to cut its emissions almost in half over the next 12 years to meet the stiffer targets dozens of international climate change experts say is required to prevent catastrophic results from global warming.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there will be irreversible changes and the entire loss of some ecosystems if the world doesn’t take immediate and intensive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions far more than is occurring now.

That means trying to limit the increase in the average global ground temperature to 1.5 degrees C, rather than 2 C as specified in the Paris climate change accord.

At 2 C, everything from melting sea ice to droughts, famines and floods will be significantly worse than at 1.5 C, the report says.

If people don’t act now, the report says, we will hit 1.5 C somewhere between 2030 and 2052. To prevent that, the world has to cut the amount of emissions released each year by 2030 so that they are no more than 55 per cent of what they were in 2010. For Canada, that means emissions would need to fall to a maximum of 385 million tonnes a year.

In 2016 they were almost twice that, and the Canadian government’s current aim is to only cut to about 512 million tonnes a year. Even that more modest goal is out of reach for now despite plans such as the controversial national carbon price, making buildings more energy efficient and eliminating coal as a source of electricity by 2030.