Mr. Harper Must Deliver

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived in Copenhagen Wednesday night,
rumours swirled that Canada would announce short-term funding to help poor
countries adapt to global warming and reduce their own emissions.

Alas, Mr. Harper has made no such announcement. In fact, he has made no
public appearances at all, leaving it to Environment Minister Jim Prentice to
tell delegates that Canada will not budge.

With 24 hours to go in the negotiations, Canada's emissions reductions
targets remain the weakest in the industrialized world. Canada continues to
insist on its own baseline year instead of the agreed 1990. And Canada refuses
to support a long-term fund to help developing countries.

Hilary Clinton set the stage for Canada to move at least on the financing
part of the deal in her address to the plenary Thursday morning, when she
pledged the United States would support a Global Climate Fund.

The US, Ethiopia
and the European Union are coalescing
around a climate finance package of US$100
billion by 2020. Canada remains silent.

That discussions on climate cash have finally got
moving after two long years of delay is good news. But US$100 billion is only half
the amount poor countries need.

The World
Bank's assessments show US$100 billion annually will be needed for adaptation alone,
with another US$100 billion needed to help countries reduce emissions.

Mr. Harper
agreed in principle to more short-term money at the Commonwealth Summit two
weeks ago. Yet neither he nor Mr. Prentice has said how much, or pledged not to
raid the aid budget to pay for it.

On another front

A UN assessment of the emissions-reductions pledges made to date, which
leaked out today, shows rich countries are not living up to their stated
ambition of keeping warming to a maximum of two degrees. At the current level
of targets for 2020, the analysis demonstrated, the world is likely to face
athree-degree increase in the planet's temperature.

Oxfam
estimates that with a three-degree rise as many as 600 million more people will
risk hunger and up to four billion people could face water shortages. And the
higher the temperature, of course, the more costly the impact. The World Bank
estimates of adaptation costs presume a two-degree rise in temperature.