ANDREW ROBINSON
The Beacon

    World leaders met last week at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Singapore, little over a year before the targets for the Kyoto Protocol were originally set to be met.
    Alas, instead of meeting the target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels, most countries, including Canada, have regressed. The United States, one of the world’s leading emitters, never even signed it in the first place.
    This APEC summit covered a wide variety of topics, and climate change was given some time in the spotlight, with leaders looking towards next month’s climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, as a point in moving towards a new worldwide treaty on combating global warming.
    Disheartening news when you consider the conference had been initially planned to produce a new global climate change treaty.
    Talk and inaction – it’s sad.
    In Newfoundland and Labrador, there’s a lot of potential for significant change to result from whatever impact climate change has. If water levels rise, what will that mean for some of the homes along the shorelines of the Kittiwake Coast in 50 years?
    If temperatures rise as expected, how will that affect the habits of sea creatures many people in this region depend upon for a living? An even better question might be whether there’ll even be fish populating our waters in 50 years? But that’s best left for another day.
    If predictions made by scientists come true, there are consequences, many of which are unknown. Action on these matters has seemed necessary for a long time, but action has been slow coming and lacking in either teeth or ambition.
    At the APEC summit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said a global treaty is necessary, which is a good and decent thing to say. If it were coming from a more convincing salesman, it might even seem sincere.
    However, the prime minister’s priorities have long been displayed in plain view for all people to see. Concerning the most prevalent polluters in the country in his Alberta oil sands, the Harper government has continued to promote the concept of intensity-based targets.
    These targets only aim to slow greenhouse gas emissions without actually reducing them. By my logic, it seems like a counter productive option appeasing mega-rich oil companies.
    Without a doubt, the oil companies are important to the country’s economy, and that even applies to our local one. Guaranteed, anybody reading this knows somebody who spends a few months at a time in Alberta making thousands of dollars in oil money. Eventually, this money makes its way back to communities throughout the central region.
    You would think oil companies of all business could handle being forced to make changes to how they operate in order to meet the demands of strict emission guidelines? They could light smokes for every person in this country with five-dollar bills – maybe even tens.
    Shareholders though have the power. If profits drop, they get mad – even if the profits are still unfathomably huge. EnCana Corp., one of the largest Canadian oil companies, posted net earnings of $1.2 billion for the first half of 2010. Almost seems wacky.
    The economy has stolen much of climate change’s thunder over the last year or so, relegating it to a pet cause now receiving much less attention from the media than it did when folks like former U.S. vice president Al Gore couldn’t be missed.
    Ultimately, it all comes down to two things: can the economy handle strict targets on greenhouse gas emissions that force them to rethink how they operate, and can new business opportunities arise?
    The latter point is one they have to latch on to. Money can be made in environmental technology. A small St. John’s company I worked for a number of years ago, called Blue Line Innovations, has developed a product that helps people understand how day-to-day household electricity usage affects the bill. They have continued to grow over the years, and now sell their product in stores and online.
    It’s all a matter of innovating, creating ideas, and latching on to opportunities. There are plenty out there, and with luck, new opportunities for rural Newfoundland may come about. One way or another, they will have to, because oil will not last forever.