Canada's Image

World leaders recently met in Cancun for United Nations climate change negotiations, and once again Canada was one of the few countries actively working against a climate agreement. This may come as a surprise; after all, Canada is known around the world as a nation of beautiful, unspoiled nature, full of people who are in touch with the soil and the forests, where wildlife flourishes and fish are plentiful. Growing up, that was the image I had of Canada, and it was a point of pride for me. Canada, I thought, was one of the last places on earth that remained pure and wild, and it would stay that way because Canadians value nature like no others. That is what I thought.

Our actual record of protecting the environment is far from the ideal I thought I knew as a child. Even though we committed to the Kyoto Protocol, we’ve spent most of our time since then trying to get out of it. The Kyoto Protocol was the result of a climate conference in which all of the nations involved pledged to take concrete steps to meet solid targets for environmental progress, particularly in regard to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The pledges made there were to be binding, yet Canada has actually increased greenhouse gas emissions dramatically since the Kyoto agreement, and nobody has held our government accountable. Who can? At the climate talks in Copenhagen last year, Canada was the recipient of the “fossil award”: we were the least willing, of all of the nations involved, to take climate action. The fossil award is an international embarrassment. Is there any way we can now reclaim our international image? And finally, at the talks in Cancun, Canada was one of only three nations who attempted to block an extension of the Kyoto protocol. On the train of international progress, Canada is leaning on the brake lever. But if the (supposedly) binding requirements of the Kyoto Protocol aren’t enforced by the UN, and international embarrassment isn’t enough to get our government’s attention, then who can hold them accountable?

We can. Our government is ultimately only accountable to us, the citizens. This is our country, and taking care of the environment is our responsibility – and that includes what the government does in our name. Canada’s tar sands are one of the largest devastations of nature in the world, and the oil money they provide is the main reason our government keeps trying to shirk its environmental obligations. Write your representative to let them know that you’re not okay with expanding the tar sands at the expense of not only Canada’s environment, but of the global climate. And at the same time, make changes in your own consumption: the less oil we use, the less we’ll need the tar sands. Invest in renewable energy, rather than oil companies. Educate yourself. After all, the only difference between the beautiful image of Canada I grew up with and our current international image as the world’s biggest “fossil” is human behaviour.

Jeff Wheeldon