Climate Action Network Canada

Yesterday there was a meeting of the Climate Action Network Canada, organized by Manitoba Wildlands, at the Fort Garry Hotel. It is part of a cross country tour to ask Canadians what action they think should be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address Climate Change.

During the meeting, there were a lot of ideas put foward to decrease greeenhouse gas emissions. John Bennett, Executive Director of Climate Action Network Canada chaired the meeting (top photo) and made some of his own suggestions as well. Included as one of John Bennett's suggestions was the mandatory use of new technology to maintain the temperature of the cab of trucks waiting at truck stops so that they would not need to be left idling to keep the cab's temperature warm in winter or cool in summer. He suggested this would save considerable consumption of fossil fuel, though we were not give any specific estimate. [I heard later that it has been estimated that as much as 40% of the fuel used by large trucks is idling - though this seems high to me].

To follow the Climate Action Network Tour across Canada visit www.climatetour.ca. To find out more about the Climate Action Network visit www.climatenetwork.ca

While there were a lot of good ideas, notably lacking from my perspective was any real calculations of the impact of the measures proposed. This was perhaps not the primary intent of this meeting, but for me it highlights one of the problems we have in Manitoba where the NDP have failed to provide a strategy together with specific measures to achieve the reduction of greenhouse gases to 6% below the level of greenhouse gases produced in Manitoba in 1990 (the Kyoto target - for the first reporting period 2008-2012). The measurements to date suggest greenhouse gas emissions in Manitoba have gone up since 1990 not down. We need a clear strategy with specific measures to meet the Kyoto target for Manitoba to enable our province to achieve the 6% reduction below 1990 greenhouse gas production by 2010-2012. The NDP in power for the last seven years have waited far too long to give us the specifics of how the reduction will be achieved. Furthermore the NDP need to report fully on the results of their 5 year old climate plan, and stop expecting Manitobans to believe them when they are not able to show actual overall reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.