Paris climate summit faces dilemma of how to set binding targets

Leaders to attempt to craft agreement to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 C

Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna speaks during a news conference, in Paris, France, on Sunday, Nov. 29, 2015.
Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna speaks during a news conference, in Paris, France, on Sunday, Nov. 29, 2015. (Canadian Press)

By Margo McDiarmid, reposted from CBC News, Nov 29, 2015

The much-anticipated United Nations climate summit officially starts in Paris today with a growing sense that it may not deliver any kind of hammer to force countries to curb their emissions, other than a moral one.

Global leaders from 150 countries are there for Day 1 of the conference to provide some momentum to negotiators attempting to craft an agreement to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 C.

Reporters at a news conference hosted by the Canadian government leading up to the summit got a taste of what the rest of the world might be thinking after the international negotiations wrap up in two weeks.

Canadian Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna said the world needs to have a new international deal to legally ensure that countries commit to a target to cut greenhouse gas emissions and agree to improve on their target every five years.

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NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 29: People hold a banner as they take part in a global climate march near City Hall on November 29, 2015 in New York City. The protest is part of an international weekend of action that is being mobilized to support climate activists in Paris whose massive march has been prevented by French authorities due to the recent attacks .Around 570,000 people have already marched in 2,300 events in 175 countries around the world. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images) (Kena Betancur/Getty Images)

But the sticky part is how a UN climate treaty can actually make them do it.

“There will be some parts to reflect the reality that certain countries have concerns with all aspects being binding, that maybe not all aspects will be binding,” McKenna said. “But it’s really important that we have everyone at the table and come up with an agreement — that’s really critical.”

That sparked a barrage of questions from reporters about how a treaty can be legally binding and not binding at the same time. And it’s a question that is bound to come up as negotiators get down to the business of crafting a new climate treaty that will include 190 countries.

Negotiators want U.S. on board

U.S. President Barack Obama, who is in Paris for the summit, is reluctant to sign any climate treaty that would impose legally binding cuts on the United States, because Congress won’t support it.

That happened in 1997 when the U.S. signed the Kyoto climate accord but Congress never ratified it, resulting in an agreement that didn’t apply to one of the world’s largest carbon emitters.

Canada signed on to Kyoto, but then announced in 2011 that it couldn’t meet the targets and pulled out of the treaty.

Negotiators are anxious to avoid a deal that is ultimately unworkable and excludes large polluters.

“This was attempted at the UN, and it didn’t work,” said Steven Guilbeault, who is with the Quebec-based environmental group Équiterre.

“The UN can’t go to Washington or Ottawa or Paris and police what countries are doing. At the end of the day, it is a moral obligation these countries have to do what they say they are going to do.

CLIMATECHANGE-SUMMIT/
French President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attend a meeting at the Élysée Palace in Paris, France, November 29, 2015 ahead of the World Climate Change Conference. (Thibault Camus/Reuters)

“It’s our obligation as citizens of those countries to put pressure on our governments to make sure they are delivering the goods, that we are reducing emissions.”

However Guilbeault, who is a veteran observer of at least 15 UN climate summits, is relatively optimistic about getting a deal in Paris, and he’s giving some credit to Canada’s new approach.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed Canada will play an active role at the summit to “convince and cajole” countries to sign on. Last week, Trudeau pledged to spend $2.65 billion over the next five years to help developing countries adjust to climate change.

“We’re emerging from some dark ages,” Guilbeault said. “I run into colleagues from Germany or Asia or Latin America and they’re thrilled, they are so happy that Canada is back at the table, that we are saying we’ll do our fair share.” SOURCE


 

The lies behind this transatlantic trade deal

A nuclear power plant in Biblis, south-west Germany. The investor-state dispute settlement is aready ‘being used by a nuclear company contesting Germany’s decision to switch off atomic power’. Photograph: Kai Pfaffenbach/REUTERS

By George Monbiot, reposted from The Guardian, Dec 2, 2015

Panic spreads through the European commission like ferrets in a rabbit warren. Its plans to create a single market incorporating Europe and the United States, progressing so nicely when hardly anyone knew, have been blown wide open. All over Europe people are asking why this is happening; why we were not consulted; for whom it is being done.

They have good reason to ask. The commission insists that its Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership should include a toxic mechanism called investor-state dispute settlement. Where this has been forced into other trade agreements, it has allowed big corporations to sue governments before secretive arbitration panels composed of corporate lawyers, which bypass domestic courts and override the will of parliaments.

This mechanism could threaten almost any means by which governments might seek to defend their citizens or protect the natural world. Already it is being used by mining companies to sue governments trying to keep them out of protected areas; by banks fighting financial regulation; by a nuclear company contesting Germany’s decision to switch off atomic power. After a big political fight we’ve now been promised plain packaging for cigarettes. But it could be nixed by an offshore arbitration panel. The tobacco company Philip Morris is currently suing Australia through the same mechanism in another treaty.

No longer able to keep this process quiet, the European commission has instead devised a strategy for lying to us. A few days ago an internal document was leaked. This reveals that a “dedicated communications operation” is being “co-ordinated across the commission”. It involves, to use the commission’s chilling phrase, the “management of stakeholders, social media and transparency”. Managing transparency should be adopted as its motto.

The message is that the trade deal is about “delivering growth and jobs” and will not “undermine regulation and existing levels of protection in areas like health, safety and the environment”. Just one problem: it’s not true.

From the outset, the transatlantic partnership has been driven by corporations and their lobby groups, who boast of being able to “co-write” it. Persistent digging by the Corporate Europe Observatory reveals that the commission has held eight meetings on the issue with civil society groups, and 119 with corporations and their lobbyists. Unlike the civil society meetings, these have taken place behind closed doors and have not been disclosed online.

Though the commission now tells the public that it will protect “the state’s right to regulate”, this isn’t the message the corporations have been hearing. In an interview last week, Stuart Eizenstat, co-chair of the Transatlantic Business Council – instrumental in driving the process – was asked if companies whose products had been banned by regulators would be able to sue [see footnote]. Yes. “If a suit like that was brought and was successful, it would mean that the country banning the product would have to pay compensation to the industry involved or let the product in.” Would that apply to the European ban on chicken carcasses washed with chlorine, a controversial practice permitted in the US? “That’s one example where it might.”

What the commission and its member governments fail to explain is why we need offshore arbitration at all. It insists that domestic courts “might be biased or lack independence”, but which courts is it talking about? It won’t say. Last month, while trying to defend the treaty, the British minister Kenneth Clarke said something revealing: “Investor protection is a standard part of free-trade agreements – it was designed to support businesses investing in countries where the rule of law is unpredictable, to say the least.” So what is it doing in an EU-US deal? Why are we using measures designed to protect corporate interests in failed states in countries with a functioning judicial system? Perhaps it’s because functioning courts are less useful to corporations than opaque and unjust arbitration by corporate lawyers.

As for the commission’s claim that the trade deal will produce growth and jobs, this is also likely to be false. Barack Obama promised that the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement would increase US exports by $10bn. They immediately fell by $3.5bn. The 70,000 jobs it would deliver? Er, 40,000 were lost. Bill Clinton promised that the North American Free Trade Agreement would create 200,000 new jobs for the US; 680,000 went down the pan. As the commentator Glyn Moody says: “The benefits are slight and illusory, while the risks are very real.”

So where are our elected representatives? Fast asleep. Labour MEPs, now frantically trying to keep investor-state dispute mechanisms out of the agreement, are the exception; the rest are in Neverland. The Lib Dem MEP Graham Watson wrote in his newsletter, before dismissing the idea: “I am told that columnists on the Guardian and the Independent claim it will hugely advantage US multinational companies to the detriment of Europe.” We said no such thing, as he would know had he read the articles, rather than idiotically relying on hearsay. The treaty is likely to advantage the corporations of both the US and the EU, while disadvantaging their people. It presents a danger to democracy and public protection throughout the trading area.

Caroline Lucas, one of the few MPs interested in the sovereignty of parliament, has published an early-day motion on the issue. It has so far been signed by seven MPs. For the government, Clarke argues that to ignore the potential economic gains “in favour of blowing up a controversy around one small part of the negotiations, known as investor protection, seems to me positively Scrooge-like”.

Quite right too. Overriding our laws, stripping away our rights, making parliament redundant: these are trivial and irrelevant beside the issue of how much money could be made. Don’t worry your little heads about it.

This footnote was appended on 16 December. Mr Eizenstat has asked us to make clear that he was not talking about investor-state agreements in the interview and was only referring to the EU obligations if a successful suit was brought under WTO regulations. SOURCE


Twitter: @georgemonbiot. A fully referenced version of this article can be found at Monbiot.com


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Curt Stager: Tales of a Warmer Planet

Wesley Allsbrook

By Curt Stager, reposted from the New York Times, Nov 28, 2015

Paul Smiths, N.Y. — IT’S a mistake to think the climatic effects of our carbon emissions will be over within a few decades or centuries. Our intergenerational responsibilities run much deeper into the future.

Carbon atoms do not disappear when we burn them into carbon dioxide. Isotopic tracer studies show that they work their way into the very fabric of life on Earth. Some of them travel up the food chain from the atmosphere to plants to animals to our dinner plates. Roughly one-eighth of the carbon in your flesh, hair and bones recently emerged from smokestacks and tailpipes. We are not only a source of air pollution — weare air pollution, and our waste fumes will henceforth be woven into the bodies of our descendants, too.

This inert fossil fuel carbon inside us has no direct effect on our health, although mercury and other pollutants that often accompany it amid industrial and automotive emissions may harm us. Most of the airborne carbon will eventually dissolve into the oceans, leaving a sizable fraction of it aloft until it, too, is removed by chemical reactions with carbonate and silicate minerals in rocks and sediments.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the natural mopping up of our mess will be extremely slow. Research by the University of Chicago oceanographer and climate scientist David Archer and others shows that the cleanup will take tens of thousands of years even if we switch quickly to renewable energy sources. When the Earth’s slow cyclic tilting and wobbling along its eccentric orbital path once again leads to a major cooling period some 50,000 years from now, enough of our heat-trapping carbon emissions will still remain in the atmosphere to warm the planet just enough to weaken that chill. In other words, our impacts on global climate are so profound that we will have canceled the next ice age.

It is now too late to stop human-driven warming altogether. Even if we wean ourselves from fossil fuels within the next few decades, our descendants will still face temperatures significantly higher than they are now — for millenniums to come. But that is no reason to delay or despair. If we don’t make the switch soon, our descendants will later be forced to do so under duress because of the depletion of finite reserves, and the artificially hotter Earth will be even poorer in species, habitats and lifestyles for thousands more generations.

What will it be like to live in a warmer world? Geological history contains numerous examples of previous natural hot spells that offer clues. First, consider the milder scenario.

If we switch quickly from fossil fuels, climates might come to resemble those of the interglacial warm periods that punctuated ice ages of the last two million years. During the last interglacial, which began 130,000 years ago and lasted about 13,000 to 15,000 years, global average temperatures were 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today. Enough of the ice in Greenland and Antarctica melted to lift sea levels by about 20 feet, but most polar ice survived. Stronger monsoons turned the Sahara lush and watery, and intense droughts parched the American Southwest.

Many species and ecosystems adapted to the changes that didn’t suit them by simply migrating toward the poles. Polar bears survived, presumably because they found enough icy refuges in the high Arctic to keep them going. The warmth coaxed southern Appalachian oak-hickory-black gum forests north to upstate New York and sent hippos, elephants and other typically African animals north through Europe.

Unfortunately, our Anthropocene cities, roads, farms and fences now block future migration routes, and as our excess carbon dioxide soaks into the ocean, there will be no place for shell-bearing marine creatures to migrate to as the seawater grows increasingly acidic. Furthermore, the heat-trapping gases that we release in the most moderate scenario will warm the Earth for much longer than a typical interglacial, on the order of 100,000 years.

This best-case scenario is troubling, but Earth history shows us that the alternative is unacceptable. If we burn all remaining coal, oil and gas reserves within the next century or two, we could introduce a more extreme, longer-lasting hothouse much like one that occurred about 56 million years ago: the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM.

Unlike the relatively mild interglacials driven by the tilt, wobble and orbit of the Earth, the PETM fundamentally transformed the planet. Experts speculate that it was set off by volcanism in the Atlantic Ocean, thawing of permafrost, melting of methane hydrates, or a combination of such factors. Whatever caused the PETM, it spewed trillions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air and oceans. Global average temperatures climbed 10 degrees or more, erasing cold-loving species and habitats from the planet. With atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations several times higher than today, a combination of warming and carbonic acid buildups in the oceans exterminated many deep-sea creatures and dissolved limy minerals and shells from the ocean floor.

The spectacular rise of the PETM lasted several thousand years. The Arctic Ocean became a tepid, brackish cove surrounded by deciduous redwood forests. Antarctica was covered in beech forests and so rain-soaked that silty runoff clouded the surrounding ocean. If we were to de-ice the planet in similar fashion again, global mean sea level would rise well over 200 vertical feet.

Many descriptions of the PETM focus on its onset and peak to illustrate today’s warming, but that was only the first chapter in a much longer story. What goes up must also come down, and the PETM’s temperature profile resembled a child’s playground slide with a steep ladder to the top and a long ride down as carbon dioxide was absorbed by seawater, rocks and sediments in a recovery that lasted more than 100,000 years. At the top of that slide, temperatures flipped from warming to cooling in a dramatic period of “climate whiplash.”

From the perspective of future generations, the whiplash and subsequent cooling that follows our own thermal peak could be as challenging as the warming. Species and cultures that will have adapted to centuries of rising temperatures, retreating ice, and advancing sea levels will then have to face strange new kinds of environmental change in reverse. For example, when global temperatures eventually begin to fall, the oceans will continue to swell because climates will still be warm enough to continue melting what remains of the polar ice sheets for thousands of years. Those who live through that long, strange period will face sea level rise and global cooling at the same time.

WE are not only warming the planet but also constructing and demolishing artificial worlds of the deep future. The thermal peak of a PETM reprise could last many thousands of years, long enough for future cultures and habitats to grow older than Babylon, and long enough for a greenhouse Earth to seem normal for hundreds of generations. But climate whiplash will eventually pull the rug out from under our later descendants. In that far future, there will be no more fossil fuels left to burn in order to sustain the artificial hothouse, and only a reduced, heat-tolerant fraction of today’s cultural and biological diversity will remain to face an age of global cooling that could last as long as half a million years, far more than the entire history of anatomically modern humans up until now.

A switch from finite fossil energy to cleaner, renewable energy sources is inevitable: We are only deciding how and when to do it. That is what world leaders and policy makers will be grappling with at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change that begins Monday in Paris. Much of the environmental harm that we have already done was unintentional, but now that science has exposed our role in it a new moral dimension has been added to our actions. Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on the environment makes it clear that to continue taking a profligate carbon path is to sin against future generations and our own human dignity.

As pioneers of the Anthropocene, we are an immensely powerful force of nature and can accomplish great things if we not only learn what is scientifically true, but also do what is morally right. Pope Francis tells us that “there is nobility in the duty to care for creation.” As a climate scientist who welcomes international action to address climate change, I offer a heartfelt “Amen” to that. SOURCE


Curt Stager is a professor of natural sciences at Paul Smith’s College and the author of “Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth.”

Paris Climate Talks Avoid Scientists’ Idea of ‘Carbon Budget’

 

Smog in Delhi, India, on Nov. 20. Poor nations trying to develop their economies are under pressure to adopt costlier green energy. Credit Harish Tyagi/European Pressphoto Agency

By

After two decades of talks that failed to slow the relentless pace of global warming, negotiators from almost 200 countries are widely expected to sign a deal in the next two weeks to take concrete steps to cut emissions.

The prospect of progress, any progress, has elicited cheers in many quarters. The pledges that have already been announced “represent a clear and determined down payment on a new era of climate ambition from the global community of nations,” said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in a statement a month ago.

Yet the negotiators gathering in Paris will not be discussing any plan that comes close to meeting their own stated goal of limiting the increase of global temperatures to a reasonably safe level.

In effect, the countries are vowing to make changes that collectively still fall far short of the necessary goal, much like a patient who, upon hearing from his doctor that he must lose 50 pounds to avoid life-threatening health risks, takes pride in cutting out fries but not cake and ice cream.

The scientists argue that there is only so much carbon — in the form of exhaust from coal-burning power plants, automobile tailpipes, forest fires and the like — that the atmosphere can absorb before the planet suffers profound damage, with swaths of it potentially becoming uninhabitable.

After years of studying the issue, the experts recommended to climate diplomats in 2013 that they consider the concept of a “carbon budget” to help frame the talks. Yet the idea was quickly dismissed as politically impractical, and more recent pleas from countries like Bolivia to consider it have been ignored.

The carbon budget will probably not get much attention in Paris for simple reasons.

Wrestling with a budget would, for instance, throw into stark relief the global inequities at the heart of the climate crisis. And it would underscore just how big the problem really is, how costly the delay in tackling it has been and how inadequate the plans being discussed in Paris are for limiting the risks.

Consider, for example, that Europe, the United States and China have offered emissions-reduction pledges that are their most ambitious ever. And yet, if their plans are carried out, a recent analysis suggests those regions will use up most of the remaining room for emissions in the atmosphere, leaving relatively little for the other five billion people on the planet or their descendants.

To change that equation, the biggest polluters would have to commit to cutting their emissions at rates that would be difficult to achieve, potentially disruptive to their economies and politically unrealistic.

Moreover, any serious discussion of the carbon budget would amplify a point of serious contention, known as “climate injustice,” in the talks. It refers to the idea that poor countries bear little past responsibility for climate change but are first in line to suffer its consequences, without much capacity to protect themselves.

Many of those same countries want to develop their economies by burning some fossil fuels, but because decades of high emissions by richer countries have created such profound risks, they are under pressure to adopt costlier green energy instead.

The idea of a carbon budget is based on a goal that the nations of the world set for themselves. In hopes of heading off the worst effects of climate change, they agreed in Cancún in 2010 to try to keep the warming of the planet to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the level that prevailed before the Industrial Revolution.

Many scientists do not believe that such a limit would be particularly safe — it may still cause the sea to rise 20 feet or more, for instance, over a long period — but they agree that going beyond it would certainly be disastrous, precipitating an even larger rise of the sea, catastrophic heat waves, difficulty producing enough food and many other problems.

A series of scientific papers in 2009 demonstrated that limiting the temperature increase to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit could be achieved by calculating the total amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that could be emitted into the atmosphere before emissions needed to stop. The United Nations committee that periodically reviews climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, highlighted the idea in a report it issued in Stockholm in 2013.

The group calculated a budget that can be thought of as something like — to use another food metaphor — a carbon pie, with the central question being: How can it be carved up fairly?

The problem is that about two-thirds of the pie has already been eaten by a handful of rich countries, plus China. At current rates, the remainder of it will be gone in 30 years or less. Many poor countries are crowding around the table, pleading for a sliver, but the big emitting countries insist on laying claim to most of the rest of the pie.

It is already clear, based on analyses published recently by several groups, that the pledges to cut emissions will come nowhere close to meeting the carbon budget. Many negotiators are pushing for a mechanism in which countries would gradually ratchet up their commitments to cutting greenhouse gases over time. But that would entail more delays, and it is not certain the carbon limit can be met that way.

Given the political realities, some of the scientists involved in devising the budget have resigned themselves to seeing it ignored in this round of negotiations, with the hope that countries will accelerate their efforts in coming years.

Myles R. Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford University and a leading proponent of the budget idea, said it was better for countries to keep negotiating than not. “It was probably the right call to brush it under the carpet for now,” he said.

Though it will be ignored in Paris, the idea of a carbon budget is gaining currency in the broader world of climate-change politics. For instance, the notion is at the heart of the student-led movement urging college endowment funds and other investors to shed their holdings in fossil-fuel companies. The students’ argument is not just that the companies are blocking needed change, but that they represent risky investments, given that much of the fossil fuels they hold as reserves cannot be burned if the world intends to stay within the carbon budget.

The same idea was at the heart of a speech recently by Mark Carney, the head of the Bank of England, who cited the potential economic risks of “unburnable carbon,” as it has become known. It is even an element of a recently disclosed investigation by the New York attorney general, who is studying whether Exxon Mobil and other companies have properly disclosed to investors the possibility that they may not be able to burn all their reserves.

Yet, within a month of the adoption of the carbon budget, as part of the Stockholm report two years ago, the idea of using it in the global negotiations had been dismissed out of hand. “I don’t think it’s possible,” Ms. Figueres, of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, told The Guardian newspaper that fall. “Politically it would be very difficult.”

Some country or group of countries may well try to inject the carbon budget into the Paris talks. But most delegates are so unenthusiastic about the concept that it is likely to be quickly dismissed. Dr. Levi, of the Council on Foreign Relations, is among the realists about what can be achieved in the negotiations.

“The only way you can assess foreign policy is by asking, is what we’re getting better than something else?” Dr. Levi said in an interview. “I don’t see a better deal out there.” SOURCE

Bilingualism ruling seen as ‘major setback’

Gilles Caron was one of two Alberta drivers who argued unsuccessfully before the Supreme Court that it was his right to be issued a traffic ticket in French and that his trial should be heard in French. SHAUGHN BUTTS / EDMONTON JOURNAL

By Cristin Schmitz, reposted from The Lawyers Weekly, December 04 2015 issue

The Supreme Court’s refusal to constitutionally entrench “legislative bilingualism” in Alberta moves the fight for French language services in that province back to the political realm, say language rights advocates.

The court divided 6-3 on Nov. 20 to dismiss the appeals of two francophone Albertans who challenged their English only traffic tickets in 2008.
They argued that Alberta’s Traffic Safety Act was invalid because the province was constitutionally obliged to enact its laws in both French and English by virtue of the historic bargain Canada struck in 1867 with the Metis and other inhabitants of Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory to annex the Hudson Bay Company controlled lands (comprising the Prairies and the North, including parts of Ontario and Quebec).

Gilles Caron and Pierre Boutet won in provincial court, but lost at Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench and Court of Appeal.

They struck out for the third and last time at the Supreme Court where the majority did not agree that Alberta is obliged to enact, print and publish all its laws in both languages pursuant to a constitutional promise implicit in documents from 1867 and 1870 that statutes in the annexed territory would be published in both languages.

“As we see it, there are many fundamental flaws in the appellants’ position” which is “inconsistent with the text, context, and purpose of the documents on which they rely, and must be rejected,” Justices Thomas Cromwell and Andromache Karakatsanis wrote on behalf of Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justices Marshall Rothstein, Michael Moldaver, and Clément Gascon.

The majority noted that the political events, negotiations and agreement which led to the territories’ annexation in 1870, also culminated in the creation of the province of Manitoba.

“Legislative bilingualism is expressly provided for in the Manitoba Act, 1870 but is not mentioned in either the 1867 Address [in which Parliament formally asked Queen Victoria to annex the territories] or the 1870 [Rupert’s Land and North-Western Territory] Order, the documents upon which the appellants rely,” Justices Cromwell and Karakatsanis reasoned.

“It is inconceivable that such an important right, if it were granted, would not have been granted in explicit language as it was in the Canadian Constitution and in the Manitoba Act, 1870, which was enacted at the same time as the 1870 Order was made.”

In dissent Justices Rosalie Abella, Richard Wagner and Suzanne Côté (the latter are two of the court’s three Quebec judges) agreed with the appellants that Canada promised legislative bilingualism in the 1867 Address when the Dominion of Canada pledged that, in the event of a transfer, she “will be ready to provide that the legal rights of any corporation, company, or individual within the same shall be respected.”

The words to respect the “legal rights” of those in the territories — many or most of whom were French-speaking — when read in their full context, gave assurance that the laws would be enacted in both languages in the territories and what eventually became the province of Alberta, the minority concluded.

Caron’s counsel, Roger Lepage of Regina’s Miller Thomson, called the majority decision a “huge surprise.

“I think it’s a major setback for language rights in Canada,” said the longtime language rights advocate.

“I am saddened by the decision because I think the majority starts off from the premise that language rights can only be constitutionalized if they are contained in an explicit text which, in my opinion, goes contrary to the principles the court had established in the past. It’s the first time that I’m told that: ‘Unless you have explicit text in a constitutional document, language rights don’t exist.’ ”

Mark Power of Vancouver’s Juristes Power, who was counsel for the intervener Association canadienne française de l’Alberta and also co-counsel for Boutet, called the decision a “tremendous disappointment.”

He contrasted the court’s approach to Aboriginal rights claims with its reasoning on language rights in Caron.

“As the minority shows, all of the historians agree that a deal was cut. All of the sociologists agree that that deal was that the Northwest would continue to essentially be as bilingual as New Brunswick and Manitoba, and yet it was not [expressly] in writing…But more major developments of the law have occurred in First Nations law with much less in writing — in fact some claims are almost solely based on oral history.

“But the majority says ‘No — you didn’t get it in writing, and so that [language] right doesn’t exist.’ ”

“I think that’s an overstatement, frankly,” responded Graeme Mitchell, counsel for the intervener Saskatchewan. Had the appellants won, that province would also have been compelled to translate all its laws and regulations into French.

“If you read the majority decision — and they’re absolutely right — any guarantee of language rights in our constitutional system has always been explicit, both pre-1870 and post-1870,” Mitchell said. “You can’t point to a situation where language rights have been given constitutional stature or protection where they were not explicitly set out — even in the Charter.”

He added “we’re satisfied with the judgment.” Saskatchewan has been translating laws of importance to the community into French since litigation over the issue reached the Supreme Court in 1988, he said. “We have over 50 [translated statutes] at the moment, and both the Court of Appeal Act and Regulations and the Queen’s Bench Act and Rules are in both official languages,” Mitchell said. “We’re going to…continue to do that work, and enlarge the number of bilingual statutes.”

Boutet’s counsel, University of Ottawa law professor Sébastien Grammond, said longstanding demands in Alberta for bilingual laws and delivery of other government services in French must be dealt with by the government.

“I think progress will have to be made on the political stage,” he said. “The big question is, will the new NDP government of Alberta show a more open approach than the previous [Progressive Conservative] government?”

Justices Cromwell and Karakatsanis concluded that discussions leading to the annexing of the territories show that neither Canada, nor the representatives of the territories, “ever considered that the promise to respect ‘legal rights’ in the 1867 Address referred to linguistic rights. Rather, the contemporary evidence shows that the territorial representatives considered that their linguistic rights had been assured through the Manitoba Act, 1870, not the 1870 Order, and not the 1867 Address, which is annexed as a schedule to the 1870 Order. In addition, the Parliamentary debates related to the adoption of the 1867 Address show that language rights were not subsumed under the phrase ‘legal rights’.” SOURCE


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Clean Energy Review: Showtime in Paris

This week: a Montreal company rolls out the nation’s first all-electric taxi fleet, Manitoba confirms it will run with cap-and-trade, and the world’s geekiest billionaire introduces the world’s biggest clean energy research fund.

reposted Nov 30, 2015

Bill Gates To Join Modi, Hollande, Obama and Other World Leaders to Launch Mega Clean Tech Fund

This morning, on the opening day of the Paris climate summit, the heads of 20 countries — Canada included — are expected to announce plans to double their clean energy R&D budgets by 2020 in an effort to spur on the clean energy revolution. Dubbed Mission Innovation, the project will raise new public-sector funding from some of the world’s heaviest emitters — including China, India and the U.S. — while also leveraging substantial capital from 28 private-sector investors to provide early-stage financing for clean energy projects from participating countries. Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg are among the big names behind the private-sector parallel initiative, called Breakthrough Energy Coalition, which will generate significant funds beyond what governments can provide to boost clean energy deployment, collaboration and information sharing. This past summer Gates pledged $2 billion of his Microsoft fortune to “bend the curve” on climate change. Evidently, he meant business.

2. British Columbia Releases Climate Advisors’ Recommendations

Raise the carbon tax. Mandate sales of EVs. Shift the grid to 100 per cent renewables. Those are but a few of the recommendations of British Columbia’s Climate Leadership Team, which the province released Friday. The government will ask British Columbians for input in the new year

3. Alberta Carbon Tax Crafted for Effectiveness and Political Palatability

Alberta’s carbon tax won’t actually be “revenue neutral” as billed — and “that’s the best thing about it,” climate hawk David Roberts argued. Revenues raised will flow right back into transition assistance for hard-hit workers, renewable energy, and other things that boost buy-in.


4. Saskatchewan Will Turn to Wind and Solar to Clean Up its Grid

Saskatchewan’s utility detailed its plan to double the share of renewable electricity on its wires by 2030. It will kick off with a big wind and solar push and follow with geothermal until fully 50 per cent of the grid is clean and renewable. Coal will remain in the mix, for now.

5. Canada’s First All-Electric Taxi Company Launches in Montreal

Venture capital firm XPND Capital launched Taxelco, the nation’s first 100-per-cent electric taxi service. The company is piloting a fleet of 50 vehicles—a mix of Nissan LEAF and Kia Soul EVs. The company ultimately aims to electrify the city’s taxi industry.

6. Tim Flannery: “Third Way” Solutions Can Foster an Atmosphere of Hope

In a special guest post at Clean Energy Canada’s website, renowned climate scientist andAtmosphere of Hope author Tim Flannery argues that humanity must begin investing in “third-way” technologies that could help hold back a warming climate.

7. Manitoba Will Price Carbon Pollution via Cap-and-Trade System

Manitoba premier Greg Selinger will release the province’s new climate change strategy this Thursday. The plan will include a cap-and-trade system targeting large emitters along with what he called “some novel ideas” to cut carbon pollution.

8. Ontario to Detail Climate Plan in Early 2016

In January, Ontario will detail its plan to cut carbon emissions 80 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2030. Details are scant but the five-year action plan will likely include measures to target passenger transportation and buildings, Premier Wynne said.

9. China Is Looking to Outsource Some of its Solar Panel Manufacturing

In a twist on the usual outsourcing story, Chinese solar manufacturing firms are starting to “offshore” production to India, Malaysia, and yes, Canada. Overseas production will make up nearly a tenth of all China-owned solar manufacturing capacity by the end of this year

10. As Far As Climate Summits Go, This One’s Gonna Count

We’ve seen many rounds of climate talks before, but COP21, which kicks off today, represents a significant milestone in the world’s transition to clean, renewable energy. Our director Merran Smith explains why in a special preview of our team’s upcoming dispatches from Paris. SOURCE


 

Bill Gates image: Suzie Katz, Flickr. | Solar installation workers image: David Dodge, Green Energy Futures, Flickr.

 Making the Paris Climate Talks Count

At the bottom of all the jargon that will be thrown about this week’s climate conference are human lives.


by Naomi Klein, reposted from The Nation, Nov 29, 2015

It’s a classic case of the shock doctrine in action: In the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks on Paris earlier this month, the French government is using that crisis to try to silence the climate justice activists who have converged on the capital city for this week’s COP21 climate conference. But this time it’s not working.

In the first of Naomi Klein’s video dispatches from the front-lines of the Paris climate justice protests, produced by Mediapart and The Nation, Klein explains that at the bottom of all the jargon that will be thrown about this week are human lives—lives that are already being impacted by climate change. If these talks fail to produce substantive changes to our carbon-intensive economy, those lives will only be in greater danger.
—The Nation.

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