Elizabeth May in Conversation with Paul Beckwith - At COP15 in Montréal
Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands, Co-leader of the Green Party of Canada, and long time environmental activist joins Paul Beckwith in a discussion about the recent United Nations CBD-COP15 and UNFCCC-COP27 events. Elizabeth draws from years of experience to provide insightful historical context for the two treaties as well as her perspective on their outcomes.
This video was recorded on December 15th, 2022 and published on January 12th, 2023.
Some of the topics discussed:
- How since the Framework Convention on Climate Change was first signed in Rio in 1992, humanity has emitted more greenhouse gases than from the time of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution up to when convention was signed.
- How the negotiations at these UN conferences are like a basketball game. One plays for 2 hours and the game is often decided at the last minute.
- How the climate crisis is the largest single threat to preserving species, and the single largest cause of potential extinctions.
- How Canada is no exception in that it continues to hack away at the forest cutting through old growth forest, poisoning biodiversity through our use of pesticides, and pursuing minerals underground getting forests out of the way to get them.
- How the target of 30% by 2030 is more complex than one might initially consider when a country’s biodiversity impact can be primarily caused by its consumption rather than what it is doing within its own borders since this consumption impacts other parts of the Earth.
- The importance of the indigenous peoples when one considers that 30% of the land base has to have no people on it. Should this mean we dispossess the Indigenous people from their lands in order to preserve biodiversity?
- How In terms of the goal of 30% by 2030, the biggest obstacle will be that those repositories of biodiversity, which have the most potential for us to set aside and preserve, are in developing countries where it’s simply not possible for biodiversity to be set aside without financing to ensure that those countries are compensated for what they give up in development.
- and more. . .
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Special Guest:
- Elizabeth May - Canadian politician, environmentalist, author, activist, and lawyer who is serving as the leader of the Green Party of Canada since 2022, and previously served as the leader from 2006 to 2019. She has been the member of Parliament (MP) for Saanich—Gulf Islands since 2011. May is the longest serving female leader of a Canadian federal party.
Regular Panelist:
- Paul Beckwith - Climate Systems Scientist. Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Paleoclimatology Laboratory as well as at Carleton University
Video Production:
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Charles Gregoire - Climate Reality Leader, Electrical Engineer, Webmaster and IT prime for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum
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Heidi Brault - Climate Reality Leader, BA(Psychology), Library & Information Technician Diploma - Video production and website assistant - Organizer and convener, Metadata technician, COP27 Team Lead for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum.
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