Province needs to fix its flawed climate plan

In 1992, Canada and the nations of the world acknowledged the threat posed by human-caused global warming with the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since 1995, the signatories to this convention have met annually to assess our progress in addressing this existential crisis, and those deliberations have been informed by scientific reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Yet, the climate crisis continues to escalate.

There is broad scientific consensus that to restrict climate change to a manageable level we need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The IPCC says the first step in achieving this is to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030.

In Canada, some argue that we’re not the problem because we’re responsible for only two percent of global GHG emissions.

They neglect to point out that we’re one of the top 10 GHG emitting nations and, on a per capita basis, we’re in the top four. So, the least we can do is bring about the reduction called for by the IPCC.

Sadly, while they claim to take climate change seriously, both our federal and provincial governments are falling short of the IPCC target.

Six months ago our provincial government released their climate change action plan — “The Way Forward on Climate Change in Newfoundland and Labrador.”

Outside of environmental circles this document has received relatively little scrutiny despite the fact it’s a very flawed plan.

A core deficiency is that, while the IPCC calls us to reduce our GHG emissions to 5.41 megatons by 2030, the province’s 2030 target is 6.92 megatons — significantly shy of the IPCC target.

If the entire world follows suit, the planet we leave to our children and grandchildren will be an increasingly hostile and uninhabitable place. And let’s be clear, it’s our children and grandchildren who will bear the catastrophic consequences of our failure to take climate change seriously.

Over the past year, youth around the world have been striking from school to protest government inaction on addressing the climate crisis. Let’s not dismiss this as some mass act of truancy.

They’re literally fighting for their lives against the inaction of our political leaders and the apathy of the electorate.

We grownups have inflicted this crisis upon them. We grownups need to make it right. A good place to start would be demanding that our provincial government replaces its flawed climate action plan with one that addresses the climate crisis like the emergency it is.

Mark Nichols St. John’s