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ENVIRONMENT: Skating on Ever Thinner Ice

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Feb 20 2006 (IPS) - Canada’s greatest hockey heroes honed their skills on backyard ice rinks and frozen ponds. But in an ominous development, these are starting to vanish because of warm winter temperatures, says Mike Hudema of Global Exchange, a youth-oriented environmental NGO.

“A pond hockey tournament in the Yukon (in Canada’s arctic north) was canceled in December because it was too warm,” he told IPS.

To dramatise the problems caused by uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions, climate change activists in several countries played outdoor ice hockey on the anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol treaty to push for deeper cuts in these pollutants.

“Save hockey, stop climate change”, was the rallying cry at 19 games in Canada, the U.S., Sweden and Austria.

January, normally Canada’s coldest month, was the warmest on record – 10 degrees C, warmer in some places – melting ice and snow throughout the country.

Winter sports are at real risk due to global warming and people want governments to make the deep cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions so their children and grandchildren can enjoy playing hockey or skiing, Hudema said.

The 1990s was the warmest decade on record, while 2005 was the warmest year. With every degree of temperature increase, the snow line creeps back 100 metres. These changes are threatening the existence of the Winter Olympics, the activist noted.

A 2003 United Nations Environment Programme report stated that ski resorts below 1,500 metres, including most in the northeastern United States, will no longer be “snow safe” within 50 years.

Already, eight of Europe’s nine glacial regions are in retreat, and at their lowest levels for 5,000 years. European snowfall in Alpine areas below 1,600 metres has been reduced by 20 percent, according to the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research.

The “save hockey, stop climate change” games were held Feb. 16, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol and to call for deeper cuts in GHGs. Under Kyoto, 34 industrialised nations, including Canada, are obligated to reduce their emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

However, the emissions of Kyoto signatories like Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland and Canada are currently 20 to 40 percent above 1990 levels.

Environmental groups like Friends of the Earth International have charged that governments are failing to make the necessary efforts to meet their Kyoto targets. More importantly those targets are not nearly deep enough to avoid dangerous runaway climate changes, they say.

“If we are to have any hope of keeping temperature increases under control while we still have time, governments around the world must do more to improve energy efficiency, clean up our use of fossil fuels and invest more in sustainable, safe renewables,” said Friends of the Earth International climate change campaigner Catherine Pearce in a statement.

Richard Kinley, acting head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, notes that emissions from many countries are 3.5 percent below 1990 already and others will make their target by using additional measures and market-based mechanisms.

“Canada could reach its Kyoto targets – but we don’t know if the government wants to,” said Elizabeth May, executive director the Sierra Club of Canada, an environmental NGO.

Canada’s newly elected prime minister, Stephen Harper, supports the George W. Bush administration, which opposes Kyoto as too costly, and previously promised to pull Canada out of the international agreement

Canada has long been a strong supporter of Kyoto and was host last year to the largest U.N. climate change conference ever. At that meeting in Montreal, 189 nations, including the United States, agreed to launch formal talks on GHG reductions after the Kyoto Protocol runs out in 2012.

“Public support for the Protocol is very strong. Canada will become an international pariah if the new government pulls out,” May told IPS.

It is a good sign that Canada’s new environment minister, Rona Ambrose, recently agreed to retain the presidency of Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, she said. The COP president plays a major role in a series of meetings this year that will culminate in a major conference next fall in Kenya.

However, Ambrose has also said that Canada won’t support trading emissions credits with other nations or any other international deal that does not have a “direct environmental benefit to Canadians”.

“Canada is very unlikely to meet its targets without emissions credit trading,” said Dale Marshall of the David Suzuki Foundation, an environmental NGO.

Under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, industrialised countries can earn emissions credits by investing in clean energy projects in the South. Aside from reducing GHG emissions, these projects would indirectly improve air quality over Canada.

Canada had previously allocated a billion dollars are year to buy these credits. But it is not clear exactly what types of credits Ambrose would support, Marshall said in an interview.

“And while a few countries may not meet their Kyoto targets, we hope the new government will not use that as an excuse for not reaching our commitments,” he said.

The issue is made more serious by the latest science, which shows that the Greenland ice cap is melting far faster than scientists had feared. Twice as much ice is now going into the sea as it was five years ago. As a result, sea levels are rising faster and will be much higher – as much as one metre and perhaps more – by 2100.

Deep GHG emissions cuts of 30 percent by 2020 and 60 percent by 2040 will be needed to prevent disastrous climate change, said May.

However, “It’s unlikely this new government will support those kinds of cuts,” Marshall said.