The Owen Sound Sun Times e-edition

Ruff questions urgency of fight against climate change

SCOTT DUNN

Local Conservative MP Alex Ruff told local climate activists he favours reducing carbon emissions but he downplayed the urgency of doing so outside his Owen Sound constituency office Thursday.

And he told the group he doubted an emissions cap on the oil and gas industry would be part of a Conservative climate-change policy, which he advised people not to expect until after the Liberal government calls an election.

He called for more nuclear energy and in an interview said he favours climate-related resilience, be it building homes out of more fire-resistant materials in the face of wildfires and not building on floodplains in the case of floods.

Ruff came out to the parking lot at his constituency office and spoke with a couple dozen people, some holding signs which said “Cap Emissions” and “The Only Proven Carbon Capture Technology,” which referred to a potted sapling presented to Ruff during the noon hour gathering.

“One thing you might all disagree with me, there's a misperception out there about how to reduce CO2 emissions,” by stopping doing certain things, he said. What's needed is “more nuclear power around the globe.”

Canada is responsible for 1.6 per cent of global emissions and so what's done here “won't change anything” when “China's putting more coal plants online every month,” Ruff said.

Joachim Ostertag asked Ruff how to “make things happen . . . because it's an emergency. We don't have 50, 100 years to fix this thing.” He suggested Ruff could raise climate concerns in his newsletter and say “that you stand behind it. Because we need leadership.”

Ruff replied: “I will disagree with you on just how, the use of . . . 'emergency' or how urgent the situation is,” he said. “It's not helping the issues when it becomes -- and I don't want to be inflammatory -but alarmist, right?”

“I'm just saying there's certain things that get reported unfortunately in the media that has inflamed the concern . . ."

“But it's (the) International Panel on Climate Change,” Ostertag interjected. Ruff said the IPCC'S report “has taken the worst case,” which caused one man to say “That's nonsense. Come on.”

Ruff later clarified his comments to say “media reporting/some activists have taken one portion of the report that talks about the worstcase scenario and that is all that is being amplified/messaged.”

The IPCC'S latest report says more than a century of burning fossil fuels and unequal and unsustainable land use has led to global warming 1.1 C above pre-industrial levels.

It has led to more intense extreme weather and increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world. The report says warming must be kept to 1.5 C. “Emissions should be decreasing by now and will need to be cut by almost half by 2030, if warming is to be limited to 1.5°C.”

Ruff said “We have to be realistic about how do we implement some of this stuff. And the issue is, if we're going to put more people and kill more people -- because you're putting them on the street or they can't afford to live -- then that's not helping the matter either.”

He said Canada's wealth comes from oil, natural gas and other natural resources and agriculture. In an interview he said world emissions would fall if they burned Canadian oil and natural gas because its production is relatively cleaner.

One man told Ruff “you're wrong ” when he heard the MP suggest there wasn't the urgency to fight climate change because (media/activist focus) on the IPCC'S report, he said, relied on the worst-case scenario for the planet. “That's science,” the man said.

“To say that this is all a bad report because it's focusing on what's the worst. That's nonsense. That's pure Conservative talking points,” he said, which Ruff disputed.

One man suggested Canadians are relatively isolated from climate impacts compared with other countries which are feeling them now. One warned of geopolitical consequences of a warming planet.

But they applauded Ruff for listening and speaking with them. Organizer David Walton promised to set up a meeting with him to talk more. Ruff said he'd present in the Commons a petition calling for an emissions cap, even if he didn't necessarily agree with it.

In an interview, Walton said of Ruff that he was “just happy that he was very honest and willing to talk to us.”

“But I think we need an emissions cap. We don't have time to fool around. He doesn't feel that it's imminent but it is imminent. The wildfires in Alberta, more typhoons and hurricanes around the world are all indicators of climate change.”

If the world warms past the tipping point “we can't avoid the worst effects,” Walton said.

The climate rally was one of more than 20 such gatherings at MP'S offices across Canada orchestrated by Leadnow, which is calling for a “bold emissions cap.” It's seeking significant carbon reductions by the oil and gas industry by 2025 and 60 per cent reductions by 2030.

Ruff said in an interview Conservatives are “all about” reducing emissions.

But the Conservative platform in 2019 and 2021 elections didn't include emissions caps on the oil and gas industry as major plank, he confirmed. “As such, I'm doubtful that a cap will be one of our major platform policy focuses during the next election,” he said in an email after the gathering.

Conservative party policy says an “effective international emissions reduction regime on climate change must be truly global and must include binding targets for all the world's major emitters, including China and the United States” and “legislated emissions caps” to reduce smog.

FRONT PAGE

en-ca

2023-05-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-05-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://eeditionowensoundsuntimes.pressreader.com/article/281526525429787

Sun Media