Climate deal could bolster region: Cullen
If Canada makes a firm commitment in Paris this week, it could open the door to new energy projects in the area, an area MP said Thursday.
Skeena-Bulkley Valley rep and NDP environment critic Nathan Cullen is currently in Paris for the United Nations conference on climate change, which wraps up today after two weeks of negotiations.
According to the latest draft of the agreement being hashed out by international delegates available on Thursday, Canada is among those agreeing to “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C, recognizing this would significantly reduce risks and impacts of climate change.”
“If you translate that back to reductions we’re going to have to make in Canada, it’s going to take a lot of effort – I mean, a lot of effort – just to make our economy less polluting,” said Cullen.
“You can simply not be building new bitumen pipelines at the same time and rapidly expanding undeveloped oilsand places,” Cullen said.
That could spell finding new funding sources for green energy projects cropping up in B.C.’s northwest, said Cullen, as well as creating potential for implementing a nationwide price on carbon.
“It’s the two sides: getting rid of the threat of things like Northern Gateway and locking in the tanker ban and then, on the other side, taking advantage of Canada having to meet some commitments that it’s now made in Paris by creating those new sources of energy and new ways to move our economy in a much more efficient and less-polluting way,” Cullen said.
Details on the crude oil tanker traffic moratorium highlighted as a priority in mandate letters from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to members of his cabinet are slow in coming, noted Cullen.
He referred to a similar ban put in place in the early 1970s under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as “totally vague” and said it “led to 40 years of uncertainty and conflict.”
“We don’t want that again,” Cullen said, adding he had sat down with Environment Minister Catherine McKenna that day and discussed the issue.
A paucity of details also likely played into Canada being handed a second place ‘fossil of the day’ award by Climate Action Network International on Wednesday.
“It’s a bit disappointing, but I think the challenge is Canada has shown up and been praised for having a new approach and a new tone and has really fallen short on details and this is some of the groups expressing some concerns about that,” Cullen said. “You can’t survive on reputation. You really do need to have something backing it up.”
According to the Canadian Press, the distinction was handed out for the Canadian negotiators reluctance to have compensation for poor countries included in the final Paris agreement.
“It’s hugely important to the developing world because the impacts of climate change, they simply can’t afford it. And one of the things being negotiated (Thursday night) is a new fund for moving people – evacuating people essentially – over the next 10 or 20 years,” Cullen said.
“When you start to look at the numbers that are being suggested as to what it’s going to cost, it is staggering. It gives you even more imperative to make sure that we don’t heat the planet up by any more than we absolutely have to because we can’t afford it.”