Good Sunday Morning!
For most of my readers we are having an unusually chilly morning. I woke up on Salt Spring Island after last night’s community meeting. My SSI hosts report that only one other time over the last twenty years has the thermometer recorded minus ten. Meanwhile a young friend of John’s daughter living at his Ashcroft place reports minus 32, and in our Sidney apartment the pipes have frozen.
Predictably, Fox News is citing these freezing temperatures a proof that “global warming is a hoax.” . https://www.foxnews.com/media/kudlow-denies-global-warming-midwest-faces-cold-weather-forecast-hoax
In fact, it is the opposite. This is all predictably part of the weather variations that are part and parcel of the climate crisis. The link between global warming and extreme cold is well understood by scientists. The polar vortex typically keeps extreme cold in and around the circumpolar North. As the Arctic warms the jet stream weakens and as the jet stream weakens the polar vortex collapses allowing frigid and brutal cold to move south. Reuters interviewed a climate scientist who put it succinctly:
“Over the past 30 years, the Arctic Circle has experienced the fastest warming globally, known as the ‘Arctic amplification’ phenomenon,” said Shao Sun, a climatologist at the University of California, Irvine.
Warming leads to a weakening of the polar vortex in the Arctic, making it easier for cold air within the vortex to move southward, contributing to the occurrence of cold wave events.”
The Guardian reported what scientists had predicted, confirming that 2023 was the warmest year on record:
European Union and United Nations scientists had already made the call. Now confirmed by US and WMO.
“Last year was the hottest ever reliably recorded globally by a blistering margin, US scientists have confirmed, leaving researchers struggling to account for the severity of the heat and what it portends for the unfolding climate crisis…
“On Friday, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released its own temperature data, also confirming that last year was the hottest on record, surpassing the pre-industrial period by 1.45C.
“We cannot afford to wait any longer. We are already taking action but we have to do more and we have to do it quickly,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary general of the WMO. “We have to make drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources.”
Just as the world needs to pull together to ensure global action to confront the climate crisis can be effective, we face a growing attack on the international rule of law.
It is a growing sentiment fueled by conspiracy theories distributed on social media that any international rules and institutions are somehow evil. The difficulty in confronting right wing populist attacks on international agencies is that over the years, I have thought some were pretty evil myself. The actions of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other IFIs (International Financial Institutions) have promoted neo-liberal policies and structural adjustment that hurt the poorest of the poor and the environment. I fought the World Trade Organization’s overreach and still do.
Meanwhile the major focus of conspiracists is the World Economic Forum, which has no status as an international agency, is not part of the United Nations and now attracts a huge wave of vitriol from the Right wing.
The annual WEF meeting in Davis opens tomorrow. I expect to get another round of emails and twitter attacks that I am somehow involved with the WEF. I am not. I see it as being like a rich man’s private country club, behind high fences, up on a hill. I have no reason to go there. The WEF does not affect my work and has no role over or in our parliament. Yet. Somehow many people have been convinced it controls our world.
This is a quick report from the CBC:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/davos-world-economic-forum-conspiracy-theories-1.6715233
“The annual event in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos, which opens Monday, has increasingly become a target of bizarre claims from a growing chorus of commentators who believe the forum involves a group of elites manipulating global events for their own benefit.”
Pierre Poilievre has pledged none of his ministers would ever attend the annual summit in Davos, despite the fact that his former boss, PM Stephen Harper attended regularly. It was from his perch in Davos that Harper announced a (fortunately reversed) change to old age security entitlement from 65 to 67. https://www.hrreporter.com/news/hr-news/is-eligibility-for-old-age-security-benefits-rising/279093 eds.
On the other hand, for all the inefficiencies and failings of the United Nations, the world would be a much more dangerous place without it.
The United Nations is essential.
Recently one of Poilievre’s top lieutenants, MP for Haldimand Norfolk Dr. Leslyn Lewis, is sponsoring a petition calling for Canada to withdraw from the United Nations.
Even though sponsoring a petition or reading it in the House does not mean an MP supports the petition, it is so appalling that the Globe and Mail made it the subject of an editorial:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-whereas-mps-should-not-back-inane-ideas/
“… the petition Ms. Lewis sponsored is based entirely on the fantasy that the UN’s agenda is an evil plot to undermine personal freedoms in the service of such right-wing conspiracy devils as the World Economic Forum, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, International Planned Parenthood Federation, etc.
“When a media outlet interviewed the British Columbia man who asked Ms. Lewis to sponsor his petition, he went further. “If they get what they want, it would be the elimination of a majority of the population and those that would remain would be slaves, and they would be repeatedly injected with mRNA injections to change their DNA so they lose their humanity and they are different creatures.”
“Ms. Lewis didn’t have to sponsor this petition. The rules of Parliament make it very clear that MPs are not obliged to do so if asked. It’s a choice, and in her case it’s a telling one.
“She should have known better than to lend her name to this sort of inanity, much less promote it on social media. MPs need to show respect for the truth and for Parliament’s institutions, and they need to stand up to misinformation.”
Standing up to misinformation, and worse, disinformation is a full time job.
Recently the role of international judicial governance is in the spotlight with South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice into whether the Netanyahu government’s response to the October 7 attack constitutes a genocide. I have no problem in describing Hamas as an organization intent on genocide, but the international court of justice does not apply to organizations, such as Hamas. They apply to nation states. As Greens, we support the issue being brought to court because this is a dispute that’s taking place in legal circles and our society. We’re not commenting on the merits of the case but welcome the case being brought to the ICJ which exists precisely for this purpose. The ongoing hearing is about provisional measures, not the merits of the case. Jonathan Pedneault and I agree that Canada must commit to supporting whatever the court decides – as we did on Gambia/Myanmar and Ukraine/Russia – and we cannot speculate on what that decision will be.
In mentioning the WTO above, I realized I have not shared in this letter an article on climate and trade I wrote at the end of December.
Because the Hill Times has a pay wall, forgive me for cut and pasting the whole article here. I will be making the 13th ministerial of the WTO in February a big focus for my work.
Lesson learned: climate failures and ozones success
We cannot re-negotiate the Paris Agreement, but we can move in the WTO to ensure all climate actions are protected to allow the use of trade sanctions, where appropriate, to insulate against decisions that penalize climate action as in restraint of trade, and to ensure the Paris Agreement will succeed where previous pacts have failed.
Hill Times-
Lessons learned climate failures and ozone success–
I am the only MP – maybe the only living Canadian? – to have been involved in negotiations of the treaty that saved the ozone layer, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, and the early negotiations of what became the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its signing at the Rio Earth Summit, and ratification in 1992, the negotiation that led to the Kyoto Protocol, and present at the negotiations that led to the Copenhagen proposal to replace Kyoto and in the negotiations in Paris at COP21 in 2015.
With this decades’ long experience in global environmental treaties, I believe it is past time to compare the success of the Montreal Protocol protecting the ozone layer against the failure in climate treaties. We need to. It is time to see what differences can be identified. Why did one succeed so spectacularly while the other sputters.
Many will say that the big difference between Montreal and Kyoto is that fossil fuels are the engine of the whole economy while ozone depleting substances impact a relatively small slice of the economy. That is a true but only partial explanation.
I have come to believe that the more significant factor was timing and the rise of the increased power of multinational corporations, the sway of neoliberalism through the 1990s and the creation of the World Trade Organization.
The extent to which the WTO has sabotaged global climate action is little examined.
The WTO was built on the post-war framework of The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the GATT), greatly expanding the scope of international trade and shifting the framework to increased corporate rights.
The GATT, upon which the WTO was built, had never set out such sweeping powers to privilege corporate profits over societal well-being. Indeed, Article XX of the GATT created exceptions for government policy measures that were deemed necessary to “protect human, animal or plant life, or the conservation of finite natural resources”. These provisions still exist, but they have been all but ignored by the WTO.
In 1997, shortly after the WTO was established, the Kyoto Protocol to protect climate stability was negotiated in Japan at COP3. Ten years earlier, the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer was successfully negotiated, using trade sanctions as an enforcement mechanism. The Montreal Protocol was spectacularly successful. Ozone depleting substances were banned in increased force over a period of years. The ozone layer is now repairing itself.
In almost every respect, the Kyoto Protocol was based on the architecture of the ozone treaty. The concepts of “common but differentiated responsibility,” of having industrialized countries cut emissions first with developing countries moving later, were transported from ozone to climate.
The only missing piece was the use of trade sanctions as an effective enforcement mechanism. The WTO created a committee on Trade and the Environment. It never made a ruling on the issue, but it raised the question, “are environmental treaties obstructing trade?”
Somehow, in the decade between Montreal and Kyoto, the trade ministers of industrialized countries instructed the environment ministers that trade sanctions were not an option. Even Canada, which had led the way in the fight against CFCs, significantly changed its stance. Canada went to Kyoto with a clear message, “if trade sanctions are included, we will not sign.” The result was that the Kyoto Protocol was left with no effective enforcement mechanism. And every subsequent climate treaty has similarly been deprived of the teeth to make the agreement work.
With the creation of the WTO, the exemptions under Article XX of the GATT have largely been assumed to be unavailable for global climate action. This is largely due to WTO appellate body rulings on two unrelated disputes.
The various efforts to use trade sanctions for conservation were ruled by the WTO appellate body to fall outside of Article XX exemptions. The two leading cases are known as “Tuna Dolphin” and “Shrimp Turtle.”
But in rejecting U.S. trade-sanctions in the interest of conserving dolphins and endangered sea turtles, the appellate body ruled:
“we have not decided that sovereign states should not act together bilaterally, plurilaterally or multilaterally, either within the WTO or in other international fora, to protect… the environment. Clearly, they should and do.”
The climate crisis clearly meets the efforts the WTO singles out as allowable – strong multilateral action has been repeatedly attempted, from the 1992 UNFCCC, through to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement. Every nation on earth is now legally bound to act.
But we have no mechanisms for enforcement.
We cannot re-negotiate the Paris Agreement and insert sanctions, but we can move in the WTO to ensure that all climate actions are protected under Article XX to allow the use of trade sanctions, where appropriate, to insulate against decisions that penalize climate action as in restraint of trade, and to ensure the Paris Agreement will be effective where previous agreements have failed.
Canada has an opportunity to move this forward at the upcoming 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) 26 to 29 February 2024 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. So the challenge is to Minister Mary Ng to make sure the 2023 “UAE consensus” on climate from COP28 is operationalized in the UAE in 2024.
All for now!! Please be sure you are a member in good standing of the Green Party of Canada by January 23 to vote at the General meeting
Much love and thanks!
Love and thanks!
Elizabeth