On credible leadership

The David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute release a report on what all too many people seem to want to wilfully ignore:

A new report says industrial countries must commit themselves to far deeper emissions cuts than those in the Kyoto Treaty if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Emissions should be cut 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050, says the report by the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute...

The report says Canada should adopt the deep-reduction targets to show leadership at a UN conference on climate change which opens in Montreal next week.

It would be great in a sense to see Canada take the lead as proposed in the report - particularly since it should be clear that the developed world would have to cut even more deeply than the stated numbers to make up for development elsewhere. But that type of promise wouldn't have much meaning given the complete lack of action toward our existing obligations.

Moreover, there would also be costs to promising to meet the Suzuki/Pembina targets. Any commitment to such large-sounding numbers could easily backfire, with talk of the projected cost of making the emisson cuts leading to a counterattack of "we can't afford to do that much, so let's keep doing nothing".

For now, the focus needs to be on getting some momentum in the right direction to begin with, rather than on promises to be dealt with decades down the road. And if the result is effective enough action now, then maybe we'll be able to realistically and credibly commit to the Suzuki/Pembina targets before too long.