Climate Change 101

Positive action and obstacles to climate action

Climate action can happen at a variety of scales. Similar, the obstacles to climate change vary depending at what level of action you are considering.

International

International climate change action is almost entirely mediated through the United Nations. We've already looked at the IPCC’s role in generating climate change reports for use in decision-making, but what else has come from the United Nation’s involvement?

  • 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit: Countries signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which called on industrialized nations to begin reducing emissions. The Conference of Parties (COP) was also formed to work towards international treaty targets.
  • 1997 Kyoto Protocol: The first international treaty, developed by the COP, which set overall emission reduction goals for all nations. It went into effect in 2005, but the US and Canada did not ultimately participate. Exemptions, loopholes and lack of participation resulted in global emissions continuing to rise.
  • Paris Climate Agreement: Signed in 2016, this international treaty intended to go further than the Kyoto Protocol but allowed countries to set their own reduction targets and plans. Concerns about the Paris Climate Agreement center on the fact that these targets and plans will not achieve the emission reductions needed to limit warming below 1.5-2 degrees Celsius.
  • COP26: The twenty-sixth Climate Change Conference of the Parties was held in 2021, with a primary goal of accelerating action and increasing the impact of the plans made under the Paris Climate Agreement. The conference resulted in the development of the Glasglow Climate Pact, which includes agreements for countries to re-visit their targets and plans to better meet the goal of limiting warming below 1.5-2 degrees Celsius, to “phase down” (reduce) the use of coal (e.g. coal-fired power plants), and a variety of individual country pledges.
  • COP27: The twenty-seventh Climate Change Conference of the Parties was held in 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. It concluded with an agreement to develop funding for vulnerable countries to deal with losses and damages from the impacts of climate change.
  • COP28 : The twenty-eighth Climate Change Conference of the Parties was held in 2023 in Dubai. This was the first-ever Global Stocktake (the Paris Agreement’s process to assess progress every five years and mobilize stronger climate action). Historically, COP28 introduced a decision to begin the transition away from fossil fuels.

Obstacles to action:

  • There are significant disagreements about who should be responsible for decreasing their carbon emissions first and most dramatically. These are based on arguments about population size, total emissions by country, and issues of social justice and development.
  • Funding is often a major barrier, especially for developing countries.
  • Political will is another potential barrier, as the political conversation in many countries is still dominated by an outdated narrative of climate action vs. economic success.

Learn more about who is responsible for climate change:

*External video - no transcript available

National

Canada has recently updated its climate action plan, and examples of actions taken to date include:

  • Investing over $100 billion toward climate action and clean growth since 2015.
  • Introducing the national carbon pricing strategy.
  • Launching new energy efficiency programs and grants for homeowners, communities, and businesses and supporting transitions to clean energy and cleaner industry through funding and tax cuts.
  • Investing additional funds in public transit programs across Canada.
  • Requiring all new light-duty vehicle and passenger trucks in Canada to be zero-emission by 2035.

Obstacles to action:

  • Canada has a large fossil fuel sector, and policies affecting fossil fuel production can raise fears about economic and societal effects, attracting the attention of fossil fuel lobby groups.
  • Canada’s provinces have significant autonomy in a variety of areas; federal policies need to take this account when planning climate action.

Learn more:


Provincial

According to the government of New Brunswick, climate change action has included:

  • Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 37% from 2005 levels.
  • 51% of in-province electricity sales are now from renewable sources (2020-2021).
  • Launched electric vehicle incentive program and 12 energy efficiency programs for homeowners, businesses, and industry.
  • Invested over $11 million in climate change initiatives through the Environmental Trust Fund.

Obstacles to action:

  • New Brunswick has a large forestry sector, and policies affecting harvesting and land management can raise fears about economic effects and attract the attention of forestry lobby groups.
  • New Brunswick is expected to be heavily impacted by climate change in terms of increased frequency and severity of flooding, which requires extensive planning and implementation of land management policies which may impact existing housing and infrastructure and conflict with other priorities.

Learn more:


Institutional

UNB has also taken action on climate change and is the first post-secondary institution in New Brunswick to implement a Climate Change Action Plan which includes five key areas:

  1. Energy and infrastructure: Improving energy efficiency and reducing fossil fuel consumption on both campuses by increasing biomass as a fuel source in the Central Heating Plant, investing in renewable energy, and LED retrofits. Additionally, the university will improve campus infrastructure standards by establishing an institutional green building policy and upgrading procurement policies to incorporate sustainability
  2. Transportation: Increase the number of active transportation users on campus by developing of a transportation plan and reduce emissions produced by campus community by developing a new sustainable travel policy.
  3. Education and programs: Create educational opportunities around climate change by integrating climate change into the curriculum.
  4. Waste management: Reduce the amount of waste being put into landfills by using waste bin switchover, exploring opportunities for small unit composting, and exploring opportunities to recycle plastics and continue to recycle cardboard and paper.
  5. Sustainable grounds: Maintain its grounds to high standards by integrating tree planting protocol into Campus Master Plan.

Obstacles to action:

Some actions available to the university are limited by available municipal infrastructure and services:

  • Discouraging the use of single-occupant vehicles requires an alternative: public transit must be affordable and readily accessible to students, faculty, and staff.
  • One of UNB Sustainability's top priorities is diverting waste from landfills on both campuses; however, waste rerouting is limited by municipalities' curbside pickup or lack of pickup (i.e., no compost collection in Fredericton)

Other actions, such as lowering fossil fuel consumption or starting new programs, are limited by:

  • Resource and funding availability
  • Institutional bureaucracy
  • Space on campus (i.e., limited spaces to place renewable energy infrastructure)

Learn more about waste pickup:

A group of students stand with their bikes on the UNB Fredericton campus

Individual

Some of the most impactful things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint (how much carbon you are responsible for releasing into the atmosphere) are:

  • Decreasing the amount of air travel you do (avoiding just one trip can be equivalent to going (gasoline) car-free for a year).
  • Go car-free by using public transit, biking or walking.
  • Eat less or no meat (just one vegetarian day per week (52 days a year) can save nearly 100 kgs of CO2 per year).

Obstacles to action:

  • Knowledge: Making informed decisions about what will decrease carbon emissions is difficult when information isn’t available or easy to access.
  • Support: Climate change action can be overwhelming and knowing where and how to start can be challenging, (see the “Focus on: Eco-anxiety" tips in the next section).
  • Accessibility: Making choices to lower your carbon footprint can be difficult when the lower carbon options are unavailable or are higher in cost.
  • Scale: The choices available to individuals are largely determined by government policies and the products and services made available by businesses and corporations. Actions at these scales are required to have large-scale effects and to improve accessibility and the knowledge available to individuals.


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