Climate Change Conference

WOW!! What a great conference. On October 28 and 29, 2008 we held our climate change conference and it was a resounding success.

Over 160 delegates attended this 2-day conference that focused on adapting to climate change. Whether we like it or not, the fact is that even if we eliminated all GHG producing activities today, the GHGs already in the atmosphere will mean that the world's median temperature will still increase by approximately 2 degrees. And we know that GHGs will not be eliminated tomorrow. So as governments around the world and in Canada come to grips with "mitigation" (ie: reducing levels of GHGs), they must also plan for how we will adapt as a society to climate change. From what I heard at the conference, from the experts, we are 10-15 years behind in developing adaptation measures and policies.

We have posted the speakers' presentations on the conference website. You will also find there the speech from the Ontario Minister of the Environment, John Gerretsen, who addressed the conference on Wednesday morning. We have also added a copy of our Globe & Mail insert on climate change that appeared on October 27, 2008. To see the presentations click here.

In this post I won't go into all the details of the conference (will write some more later), but I did want to underscore my admiration for what the Government of British Columbia is doing on this complex issue. They have taken a holistic approach to climate change are have implemented legislated GHG reduction targets as well as concrete actions to achieve these targets. Graham Whitmarsh from BC presented their action plan at the conference.

We heard from a number of extraordinary speakers throughout the two days. I want to especially thank David Pearson for moderating the two days. Over the next short while we will be developing a report on the conference that will also include recommendations for governments at all levels across Canada. Once the report is finalized we will post it on our site and also send it to governments.

Canadian governments have a key role to play in ensuring that we, as a society, are ready to deal with the impacts of climate change - from health impacts to agricultural changes; from water availability impacts to impacts on our infrastructure; and so on.