Stormy long-range forecasts call for change today

A recent spe- cial issue of the prestigious

_ Science Matters

science journal Nature could not have been time lier. With several reports, articles, and an edito- rial on climate change, it is an excellent primer for the upcoming United Nations

climate convention in Montreal.

Next week, more than 10,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries will arrive in Montreal for the largest climate conference since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. They will be there to discuss details about the Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also to discuss what comes next after Kyoto ends in 2012.

That may seem like a long way off, but making the changes scientists say are necessary to prevent dangerous climate change will take a long time, so we have to start now. Recent analysis of the anticipated impact of climate change on various regions in the near future does not look promis- ing. Canada’s Prairies, for example, could suffer from severe water shortages. In a warmer climate, more precipitation will fall in the Rocky Mountains as rain rather than snow. This means there will be less runoff from melting snow available to farmers during the critical growing season.

In the Himalayas, change is already being felt, as glaciers

melt and glacial lakes expand. More than one billion people rely on water that comes from these mountains and clima- tologists studying the area are concerned about coming water shortages. In Canada’s Far North, changes are underway

too. Ice that the Inuit could once count on for hunting and transportation is becoming dangerously thin and not forming until later in the year, threatening a culture as well as the animal species that depend on ice, like polar bears.

Canada has a lot to lose from a warming climate. After de- veloping countries, which largely do not have the infrastructure to deal with a changing climate, Canada is one of the countries that will be most affected. Per capita, we are also one of the most climate-polluting countries in the world—tight up there with the United States. That’s why Canada has an obligation to take a lead role in the upcoming climate meeting,

Looking to the US for guidance on this issue is not an option. Under the Bush administration, science has been seriously undermined and climate scientists are constantly under fire by “global warming skeptics” who are well funded by industry groups to deny and confuse the science around climate change. It happens in Canada too, but not as blatantly.

An editorial in Nature recently pointed out the scope of the problem in the US. Under the headline: “Washing- ton DC still doesn’t seem to understand the threat posed by global warming,” the

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article points out: “Global-warming skeptics still hold far too much sway in Washington, where one congressman earlier this year summoned novelist Michael Crichton to testify as a ‘scientific’ witness on climate change because of his pseudoscientific novel Szate of Fear.”

Canada knows better and Canadian politicians know better. I’ve talked to many Canadian leaders about climate change and I’m often impressed by their knowledge. How- ever, all the knowledge in the world won’t help unless it is put into action, and that is where Canada comes up short, both on a federal level and, in most cases, a provincial level too.

Canada still has an international reputation as an envi- ronmental leader, even though our real performance is lag- ging, But you can only ride your own coattails for so long. It’s high time Canada actually took a stand on an issue that will have a tremendous impact on the future of our coun- try. The upcoming climate meetings in Montreal offer our politicians a real opportunity to show some leadership and make a firm commitment towards the bigger cuts in pollu-

tion that we need to make to avoid the worst-case scenarios predicted by scientists.