The Editor,
Re. “COP21: We all must help to make it work” (Green Scene, The Tri-City News, Dec. 18).
Green Scene columnist Elaine Golds thinks that the recent global climate agreement in Paris is a wine glass half full.
I think the wine glass is half empty.
My view was explained by the forthright European bureau chief of the Globe and Mail, Eric Reguly, in his Dec. 19 column headlined “Paris climate talks were a noble failure.”
“The emissions-reduction targets are not binding and there are no penalties for [failure to comply] … [international] aviation and shipping, which together account for more than 5% of global emissions [remain] exempt … No mechanisms were set to determine national carbon prices let alone a global one, and the goal to transfer $100-billion a year … to developing countries to help them cope with climate change [remains aspirational].”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his minister of climate change, Catherine McKenna, and Green Party leader Elizabeth May have created false expectations in Canadians in the Paris treaty.
Residents of the Lower Mainland who are concerned about the threat of a rising ocean to their property values need to keep pressing their politicians for real action to mitigate global atmospheric warming.
D.B. Wilson, Port Moody
