Enviro. groups cry foul

OIL, GAS BLOCKING CANADIAN CLIMATE GOALS

Canada is living in a fantasy if the government thinks it can meet its greenhouse-gas promises without reducing how much oil and gas the country produces, environment groups told the world at a global conference on climate change Monday.

Environmental Defence and Stand.earth used United Nations climate talks in Poland to release a new report accusing the oil-and-gas industry of undermining Canada’s climate plans.

“Oil and gas is the major obstacle to Canada actually being a climate leader and not just talking about being a climate leader,” said Dale Marshall, national program manager for Environmental Defence.

The report accuses the industry of successfully lobbying Canada to water down climate policies or exempt it from them, including delaying cuts to methane emissions from oilproduction facilities and exempting up to 80 per cent of oilsands emissions from the federal carbon price due to kick in next year.

Patrick McDonald, the director of climate for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, dismissed the report as a “targeted effort by special interest groups looking at only our industry.”

McDonald said the Canadian oiland-gas industry is the only one in the world subjected to a carbon tax and that it is innovating to reduce emissions.

“We’ve been very active and very environmentally responsible,” he said.

The report, however, says the emissions from each barrel of oil produced in Canada have grown 20 per cent between 1990 and 2016.

Catherine Abreu, the executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, said at a news conference at the meeting in Poland Monday that even if the industry can use technology to reduce emissions per unit of oil, gas or coal produced, that’s just a temporary fix in a world where the long-term plan has to be to stop using fossil fuels entirely.