There's a small attempt to spin the real situation---it throws in the red herring of China's GHG emissions (a real concern, but not relevant to this country meeting its own GHG goals), and this bit of misdirection:
Added together, all these existing government actions are expected to reduce GHG emissions by 65 Mt by 2020. This is about one quarter of the reductions in GHG emissions needed to meet Canada's 2020 target. The regulation of other economic sectors and the further strengthening of existing regulations over time - along with complementary measures by provinces and territories - are expected to continue this momentum.But, pretty words about "momentum" aside, the simple fact is that there is no concrete proposal whatsoever to "further strengthen" existing regulations, and Canada will utterly fail to meet targets it agreed to at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.
As Clare Demerse of the Climate Change Network writes:
A few fun facts about the new data:There's more about the national situation here and here.
it shows that, even with currently announced federal and provincial climate policies going into effect, Canada's emissions are projected to be higher in 2020 than they are today.
This means we would be 30% above our 2020 target (7% above 2005 in 2020 instead of 17% below)
government policies would close just a quarter of the gap between business as usual emissions in 2020 and the government's target. If you've heard Peter Kent say that "we're a quarter of the way there," that's what he's referring to. What it really means is that we have no plans to cover three-quarters of the gap.
I'll soon have a post up about Nova Scotia's particular environmental goals.
