In 2009, a conference on climate change was held in Copenhagen, Denmark. At this conference, all of the world’s developed countries and the biggest developing countries agreed, for the first time, to put limits on their greenhouse gas emissions. This was a landmark, as it meant the world’s biggest emitters were united towards a single goal.
The emissions reductions agreed on were still not enough to meet the advice of scientists, but they were a big advance on reducing emissions. But what didn’t happen was a fully spelled-out and legally binding treaty.
(The Kyoto Accord was a legally binding international treaty, but it did not meet its objectives because it was not approved by the United States and because any countries that failed to meet their commitments were not held responsible.)
In 2011, the United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Durban, South Africa. One of the decisions reached at this conference was to keep the Kyoto Accord in effect and to keep negotiating to include those countries who had not signed on.
When climate change and the Kyoto Accord were being discussed, one question was often heard. "Why should Canada have to adopt the Kyoto Accord when we only produce 2 percent of the world's emissions?"
The answer is simple. Climate change is a global problem, and the solution must be global. At the present time, Canadians currently produce about 700 megatonnes of greenhouse gases per year, and much of these gases come from wasteful energy use. Canada produces approximately 2 percent of the total global substances that are released into the air by either smokestacks or automobiles. This is a major concern since Canada has only approximately half of 1 percent of the world's population.
The Canadian government planned to meet the Kyoto target of reducing fossil fuels through mandatory conditions within the agreement. Standards would need to be updated to require more energy efficient buildings, homes, vehicles, and appliances. Smaller businesses would need incentives to make necessary changes in energy use, and tax breaks would need to be given for users of public transit, hybrid cars, and cleaner technology.
Reducing the use of products such as oil and gas would create problems for the petroleum companies, however, since they produce the fuels that produce greenhouse gases.
