Photo: WWF@COP18/flickr

The news reports, “Many of the ills of the modern world — starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease — are likely to worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change, a leaked draft of an international scientific report forecasts.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue this report next March, but a 29-page draft of the summary of the report was leaked on Friday. The report says if emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and gas continue at current trajectories “the combination of high temperature and humidity in some areas for parts of the year will compromise normal human activities including growing food or working outdoors.”

Canadian Youth Climate Coalition national director Cameron Fenton says, “Canada has committed, along with the rest of the world, to limit global temperatures to a maximum of two degrees. According to their own estimates, we are on track to blow past that target. Looking at it another way, a two-degree limit requires leaving at least 80 per cent of fossil fuels in Canada and around the world in the ground. The government of Canada is attempting to expedite fossil fuel development across the country with absolutely no consideration of the climate impact.”

The 19th ‘Conference of Parties’ on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change begins next week (November 11-22) in Warsaw, Poland.

Fenton is asking the Harper government not to attend this COP summit. He says, “They’re in denial on the reality of climate change and past the point of reasonable discourse. Canada’s petrostate politics have spilled over into the global arena and since we’re not going, we also have a request for the government of Canada — stay home. Until Canada is ready to recognize the realities of a changing climate and respond to it with more than public relations lines for the fossil fuel industry, our generation and frankly the world deserve better.”

We agree with the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. Read Council of Canadians climate justice campaigner Maryam Adrangi’s blog on why we didn’t attend last year’s COP summit in Qatar (after having protested at the summits in Copenhagen and Cancun).

The Associated Press news report on the leaked climate report is here.

Photo: WWF@COP18/flickr

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Brent Patterson

Brent Patterson is a political activist, writer and the executive director of Peace Brigades International-Canada. He lives in Ottawa on the traditional, unceded and unsurrendered territories of the Algonquin...