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June 10, 2008

Canada takes top spot as Fossil of the Week

On Monday, June 9 in Bonn, the Climate Action Network awarded three “Fossil of the Week” awards to countries that were the most active in attempting to undermine the United Nations negotiations to save the world from dangerous climate change being held in Bonn. These awards recognized key disruptive actions taken during the first week of negotiations.


1st Place, CANADA:

The top prize goes to a familiar player in the race for Fossil of the Century…we at the Fossil Award committee know them well from many years of intransigent actions. Perhaps no one will be surprised to hear that the top Fossil of the Week goes to CANADA.

We award this Fossil for their bringing to LULUCF negotiations approaches that would create credits without dealing with real emissions from this sector. These ‘phantom’ credits would undermine the ambitious emissions reductions needed to avoid a warming of 2 degrees and stave off the most dangerous effects of climate change.

Proposing to account for carbon in harvested wood products and ‘factor out’ emissions from business as usual forest management are especially problematic to propose before loopholes allowing countries to account for sinks and not sources of emissions are fixed. Canada, you are a supreme fossil in our eyes.


2nd Place, JAPAN:

The second place award goes to an active country, at least when it comes to making statements. Japanese prime-minister Fukuda made an announcement regarding Japan’s commitment (or not) to tackle climate change earlier today.

However he missed a key opportunity to clearly state Japan’s mid-term target in the so-called Fukuda Vision presented in Tokyo today. This is nothing but a lack of sense of urgency. The vision includes, though written as a preliminary calculation, that Japan would cut emissions by 14% from the current level by 2020. Fukuda presented it as if this is comparable to EU’s -20% reduction commitment, despite the fact that this isn’t so. In fact, this is actually mere 4% reduction, compared to the 1990 level. One way to possibly avoid future awards would be to…End playing the number game now. For this we award JAPAN the second place prize.


3rd Place, AUSTRALIA:

Third place for the Fossil of the week award goes to a country who burns a lot of coal but sells even more to the rest of the world. The award goes to this country for a statement made in the SBSTA last Wednesday.

The country is, of course, AUSTRALIA, who said “CCS will help annexe 1 countries fulfil their commitments” and that “Small Island Developing States will be a beneficiary of this technology”…Referring of course to the idea that if CCS is taken up in the CDM small island states may not drown as quickly. Or does Australia think that small island states will buy their coal and store the co2 underground and this will help them float?

The sad thing though is that Australia will continue to get rich while the long-term burden of not only climate change impacts but also the risk and responsibility of the long- term monitoring of the stored co2 will be left to the developing world Australia, despite your new Prime Minister, you’re still a fossil.


For more information contact: David Turnbull, USCAN: dturnbull@climatenetwork.org