Canada’s Offshore Oil and Gas Would Burn Up 18% of Global Carbon Budget.

media release

For Immediate Release: December 11, 2019

Madrid, Spain  Canada must make the commitment to transition away from fossil fuels, including managing a transition away from offshore oil and gas off Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. Recently announced reserves off Newfoundland and Labrador would add up to 14% of the global GHG budget to keep the planet below the internationally recognized safe limit of global climate change, 1.5 degrees Celsius. Nova Scotia’s reserves would contribute 4% to the global GHG budget.

“I am here in Madrid asking for climate leadership from my elected leaders - my future depends on it. The UN report on the fossil fuel production gap makes it very clear that we need to get serious about shifting away from fossil fuels immediately,” reports Megan Sutton, Chair of Sierra Youth, who is attending the global climate talks in Madrid this week. “By accelerating offshore oil and gas development, Canada is in direct contradiction with the climate imperative.”

At the launch of the global climate talks in Madrid, the IPCC released the Production Gap Report, a report that shows Canada and the world must work quickly to stop catastrophic climate change by stopping the expansion of fossil fuel developments. Just yesterday in Madrid, Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson pledged that Canada would reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

“Experts say we are now in a climate crisis and a biodiversity crisis. Greenlighting new oil and gas projects in our oceans will worsen both and is unacceptable,” states Gretchen Fitzgerald, National Programs Director with Sierra Club Canada Foundation. “Our government must confront the depth of this contradiction if we are going to turn the tide on the climate emergency.”

 

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Background information:

Production Gap Report, 2019 - UN Environmental Program Report:

https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/report/production-gap-report-2019

Nalcor 2019 Resources Assessment: http://exploration.nalcorenergy.com/licensing-rounds/2019-south-eastern-newfoundland-region-nl-01-sen/

Paris to Projects calculations on carbon budgets (Table 1 page 27):
https://uwaterloo.ca/paris-to-projects/sites/ca.paris-to-projects/files/uploads/files/p2p_full_report_23jan19.pdf

 

For more information or to arrange an interview please contact:

Megan Sutton, Chair 
Sierra Youth
1-289-681-5476 /  megans@sierraclub.ca

or

Gretchen Fitzgerald, National Programs Director
Sierra Club Canada Foundation
1-902-444-7096 / gretchenf@sierraclub.ca