This year, the world got the news that climate change is a real problem, human-caused fossil fuel emissions are driving it and those emissions must be cut or very bad things could happen.

That must mean there's unanimity on what needs to be done, right?

Wrong.

The world is looking ahead for a deal to replace the landmark Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which expires in 2012. Meetings on a replacement treaty will be held in Bali, Indonesia in December.

There have been vigorous, behind-the-scenes negotiations leading up to the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, which runs to June 8. What happens there will significantly affect the outcome of the Bali talks.

In the media, the battle appears to be between the United States and everyone else on two key points.

The U.S. doesn't want the climate change issue defined as urgent, and said on May 29 it rejects a target of a 50 per cent cut in emissions below 1990 levels by 2050.

Long-time environmental activist Louise Comeau of the Sage Centre told CTV.ca it's a bit more complicated than that.

While Environment Minister John Baird garnered headlines on May 28 by saying Canada would side with the Europeans in supporting the long-term cuts target, she said the U.S., Canada, and possibly Russia could be on the same side of many issues in the June 6-8 meetings.

The target and the urgency statement are one thing, but the U.S. is trying to do something even more damaging -- taking the responsibility for climate change negotiations away from the United Nations, she said.

"This is a fight to the death to see whether we will pursue climate negotiations in multilateral (forums)," she said.

"It was fascinating (May 28) to watch Prime Minister Harper and Minister Baird. I think you'd have to kill them to get them to say the word 'UN'. All they would say is 'we believe in global approaches'."

Baird said that the UN process is not the only one Canada supports.

"The object and the focus of the efforts has got to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions absolutely, and whatever process gets us there, Canada will support. We'll meet any time, any place, and an effective system has got to get the United States on board," a May 29 Canadian Press article quoted him as saying.

On May 31, U.S. President George W. Bush dropped a bombshell, saying he wanted a new process involving the top 15 greenhouse gas emitters to be involved in talks outside the UN process.

Comeau said moving to a multiple number of organizations, all with negotiating status and setting different targets, wouldn't work. The global infrastructure for dealing with climate change already exists within the UN, she added.

The U.S. also wants to see legally-binding targets tossed for developing countries in favour of something called "pledge and review -- you'd throw in your voluntary target and then we'd look at it again," she said.

"That's where we were in 1990. That's not where we need to be now."

While Canada has publicly positioned itself as being a broker between Europe and the United States, "our reports from the inside are saying that ... in the lead-up to the meeting, Canada has been wholeheartedly supporting the U.S. position that we have to make this wider, that we have to include the developing countries," John Bennett of the Sierra Club of Canada told CTV.ca.

"The government is mimicking the Americans in both rhetoric and action."

The Harper Conservatives are looking for voluntary approaches and to get out of the Kyoto Protocol, she said.

Kyoto was developed through the UN, specifically the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. In 2001, the Bush administration refused to ratify Kyoto and in 2002, the Harper-led Canadian Alliance Party (since merged with the Progressive Conservatives to form the current Conservative Party) voted with the PCs against Canada ratifying Kyoto. In a 2002 fundraising letter to Alliance supporters, Harper vowed to kill Kyoto.

On May 29, the environmental group Friends of the Earth took the Harper government to court to force it to live up to the Kyoto Protocol.

On June 4, the World Wildlife Fund gave failing grades to both the U.S. and Canada for their efforts on fighting climate change.

Other questions

Here are some other things Comeau is watching for:

• Will Canada support the U.S. effort to have language removed calling for the global temperature rise to be held to two degrees Celsius? (The Tories dodged the question in the May 28 question period)
• Will Canada stand with the U.S. in that nation's concern about global emissions trading? (In his June 4 speech, Harper described carbon trading and offsets as necessary)
• Will Canada support a call to have a new post-Kyoto deal in place by 2009?

Supporting the 2050 target without supporting any of the other stuff isn't very significant, she said.

The real game is what countries plan to do by 2012 and 2020, "and Canada's target is appalling and it's irresponsible," Comeau said.

Baird announced on April 26 that Canada would seek to stabilize GHG emissions by 2012 and cut them by 20 per cent by 2020 - from 2006 levels.

The baseline year for Kyoto is 1990. Canada has agreed to cut its GHG emissions by six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012; however, the Conservatives have abandoned that target.

A study by the Pembina Institute finds that the Tory plan to regulate the heavy industrial sector is riddled with loopholes. The plan treats the oil industry leniently, especially the Alberta oilsands.

Even if it works, which the institute doubts, Canada will be 32 per cent above the 1990 baseline in 2012 and two per cent above it in 2020. The institute's Matthew Bramley told CTV.ca that other programs the Tories have announced set no specific targets whatsoever for GHG reductions.

The European Union and Norway have agreed to a 20 per cent cut below 1990 levels by 2020. They are willing to go to a 30 per cent cut if other nations join them.

"They made it sound like they were doing something like the Europeans, but they are using numbers that are designed to confuse," Bennett said.

"They've never actually varied from what they said last fall, which is we're going to have intensity targets ... and we're not even going to try and meet Kyoto."

"Canada's not operating as if this is an urgent problem," Comeau said.

In a May 28 interview with CTV Newsnet's Mike Duffy Live, Baird said he knows global warming is a serious problem, citing arctic melting and the mountain pine beetle crisis in B.C. as examples.

"Minister Baird knows what he has to say because Canadians demand it, but they don't believe it. And I'm not saying that just to be rhetorical," Comeau said.

On June 1, federal officials said Canada wants a climate deal that recognizes the fact that Canada is an energy exporter with a growing population and economy.

Bennett scoffed at that. "Somehow because we're growing rich on the export of oil, which produces emissions, we somehow should get a special deal."

He predicted the Europeans wouldn't listen, noting the Europeans had higher targets to begin with under Kyoto.

On June 4, Harper told an audience in Berlin, Germany that Canada couldn't meet its Kyoto target and suggested its own plan -- based on intensity targets -- as a model for other big emitters "that did not accept targets under the Kyoto protocol."

Intensity targets require less energy per unit of production, but total emissions can rise if production surges.

The Bush administration also favours intensity-based targets.

Bush "does not believe in global warming. He does not believe that it's an urgent issue," Comeau said.

Bush did refer to the "serious challenge of global climate change" in his Jan. 23 State of the Union speech, but that was all he said. He focused on energy security.

On June 6, Bush said the U.S. would oppose firm targets for GHG cuts but claimed his negotiation process would "fold into" the Kyoto process. He talked more about energy security.

Meanwhile, the Earth's climate continues to be stressed.

Carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas, lingers in the atmosphere for 200 years. Scientists say to prevent climate change from hitting dangerous levels, the levels of GHGs in the atmosphere must start coming down.

Scientists say there is the CO2-equivalent of about 425 parts per million of GHGs in the atmosphere (about 380 ppm of that is C02), and that to hold the temperature rise to two degrees, that level must be kept as close to 450 ppm as possible. The Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE) set a target of between 450 and 550 ppm CO2-equivalent at a meeting in February.

Canada and the U.S. were part of the process. Observers at the time thought that decision would help set the pace for the G8.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on mitigation released earlier this month has found that global C02 levels have risen by 70 per cent since 1970 and could rise by up to 90 per cent by 2030 if nothing is done.

If the Earth's temperature rises much above two degrees, then staving off dangerous climate change becomes almost impossible, scientists say.

"We don't have much time," Comeau said.

Aftermath

Here are some excerpts of the statement on climate change that Chancellor Angela Merkel released in her June 8 summary of the summit:

"In setting a global goal for emissions reductions in the process we have agreed in Heiligendamm involving all major emitters, we will consider seriously the decisions made by the European Union, Canada and Japan which include at least a halving of global emissions by 2050.

"We have agreed that the UN climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating future global action on climate change. We are committed to moving forward in that forum and call on all parties to actively and constructively participate in the UN Climate Change Conference in Indonesia in December 2007 with a view to achieving a comprehensive post 2012-agreement (post kyoto-agreement) that should include all major emitters. To address the urgent challenge of climate change, it is vital that the major emitting countries agree on a detailed contribution for a new global framework by the end of 2008 which would contribute to a global agreement under the UNFCCC by 2009. We reiterate the need to engage major emitting economies on how best to address the challenge of climate change. We stress that further action should be based on the UNFCCC principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities.

"Technology, energy efficiency and market mechanisms, including emission trading systems or tax incentives, are key to mastering climate change as well as enhancing energy security."

With files from The Canadian Press