The following editorial was published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like The Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page. According to RealClimate, the editorial is free to reproduce under Creative Commons.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copenhagen climate change conference: Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.”

At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”.

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

Copenhagen Candlelight Vigil

Update: Please note that the December 11 vigil has amalgamated with the December 12 vigil taking place at the Alberta Legislature 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm. The information below has been changed accordingly.
..........................

The weekend of Dec 11-13 marks the mid-way point of the climate talks taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark. To mark the occasion people around the world will gather in solemn solidarity with the nations and peoples for whom delay on climate action could mean extinction.

Edmontonians can mark the occasion on Saturday, December 12, from 5:30 – 6:30 pm with a candlelight vigil at the Alberta Legislature. It’s an opportunity to tell our provincial and federal governments that we need aggressive action on climate change, action that will take us back to 350 parts per million -- the number that scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Our Addiction

In 2006 former Vice President and soon to be Nobel Laureate Al Gore likened our tar sands industry to a narcotic. Last month with the announcement of the Kearl project we just scored another hit.

Climate Change Leadership

Karen Haugen-Kozyra, director of policy development for Climate Change Central, "a non profit organization that empowers Albertans to take action on climate change," says that “Alberta is the quiet leader, with an international reputation on climate change.” Who is she trying to fool? The record shows just the opposite.

According to the National Inventory Report the Government of Canada recently submitted to the United Nations, Alberta’s total GHG emissions in 2007 rose 5.3% over its 2006 level and a whopping 43.7% over its 1990 level. On a per capita basis Albertans are at 70.7 tonnes per person.

As the numbers show, our response to the climate crisis has been inadequate. So let’s not dress it up as leadership.

Transportation Subsidies

The Conservative government’s public transit tax credit has come under a lot of flak, most recently from the Auditor General Sheila Fraser, who in a recent report said that the environmental impact of the plan is greatly exaggerated (“Pests threaten border: AG,” The Edmonton Journal, Feb.6, 2009). Since its inception the plan has also been criticized for subsidizing people for doing what they’d normally be doing anyway -- taking transit. These criticisms are not without merit.

What puzzles me is that these same critics, the Auditor General included, ignore a much more generously funded transportation credit, one that actually encourages users to increases their greenhouse gas emissions. I’m speaking of our great parking tax credit, a scheme all levels of government and most employers and retailers actively participate in.

In spite of what the rise in downtown parking rates may indicate, most commuters park for free, and rarely are they taxed on this income supplement. Our provincial government spends $150 million building a 650-stall underground parkade. Will the rates cover the construction and maintenance of it? Not very likely. The taxpayer will pick up the difference. City officials continually roadblock residential and commercial developments because of insufficient parking, even in so-called "pedestrian friendly neighbourhoods". Out in the suburbs where most of the shopping takes place parking is free, but at what cost to the downtown core? A company I do business with generously hands out parking coupons to its customers, but fails to offer any transit tickets, same with the organizers of a convention I recently attended at the Shaw Conference Centre.

The upshot of our great parking subsidy is that it encourages GHG emissions and that the cost of the subsidy is shared by those that don’t even drive. Take your pencil to this one Ms Fraser.

Carbon Tax, the only way to go

I take little comfort from a recent Edmonton Journal editorial on the environment (“Will tougher green laws be enforced," The Journal, March 7). While our government's new Environmental Enforcement Bill may bring miscreants to justice, the bill does nothing substantive about the most pressing environmental issue of our time: global warming.

Our government still refuses to accept 1990 as the benchmark year for assessing emission reduction; they continue to dress up their intensity-based targets as true emission targets; and they still refuse to do anything about informing the public on the severity of the issue.

Canada clearly has an obligation here. Examine the per capita amount of carbon that nations have emitted into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution began and you will find Canada ranked fourth.

When it comes to aggressive action on global warming there are really only two options: a carbon tax and cap and trade. Of the two, a carbon tax is the easiest to implement: tax the carbon at source, and to make the tax revenue neutral, issue a credit at tax time. The administrative measures are already in place.

A cap and trade, on the other hand, is much more difficult to implement. The mechanism is susceptible to political interference, manipulation, favouritism and corruption. Furthermore, its implementation would be handed over to investment speculators. Last year we saw quite clearly what the “invisible hand of the market” can do to our economy. Left to its own devices, the market will do much the same with a carbon trading market.

Clearly, when it comes to tackling global warming, a carbon tax is the only way to go.

Greening the List

On Wednesday, January 14, at the University of Alberta, the Pembina Institute presented Greening the Grid, a report that details how Albertans can green their electrical grid by 2028 According to the authors, if we adopt the more aggressive of the two options detailed in the report – which we should – we can phase out coal generation entirely by 2028. Using existing technologies!

Ironically, the top 100 infrastructure projects list, released the same week, showed, in the number eight position, Alberta’s top project: a coal-fired generating plant (“Alberta boasts more projects atop infrastructure list than any other province,” The Edmonton Journal, Jan. 13). A setback, to say the least.

In any case, an energy-smart government would look seriously at the report put forward by the Institute and move quickly towards getting green energy projects on the infrastructure top 100 list for 2010. And at the same time, put a halt to any coal-fired generating plants from ever making the list again.

Anti-idling

If I understand correctly the scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the world’s largest general science society and publishers of Nature, one of the most respected scientific journals in the world); the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; the Geological Society of America, and the American Physical Society, global warming is a serious problem, the extent of which will dwarf the economic crisis that financial mismanagers working in a unregulated U.S. market have foisted upon us.

Fighting global warming will require aggressive actions of the sort only our federal and provincial governments can enact. But incremental measures like the anti-idling law Edmonton City Council is currently debating will help move us towards a better understanding of the global warming issue and ultimately an acceptance of the actions we really need to implement.