The Dominion - Mackenzie Valley Pipeline

Can Pew's Charity be Trusted?

dru — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:36:30 +0000

US foundations give millions to Canadian environmental groups

Since major foundations in the US began funding environmental groups in the late 1980s, many grassroots environmental activists have sounded the alarm about the rise of the "Big Greens." Featuring six-figure salaries and foundation funding, critics say the large environmental NGOs coopt grassroots movements and excercise control over what issues are brought up.

Recently, some activists are warning of a similar shift in Canada. In 2006, land-use planner Petr Cizek wrote an article for Canadian Dimension, calling attention to millions of dollars from US foundations being given to Canadian environmental groups.

The money comes from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is endowed by the fortune of Joseph Pew and his heirs, as well as more recent donors. Joseph Pew founded Sun Oil, now Sunoco, a US oil company with revenues of $36 billion in 2006. Under Pew, Sun Oil also founded Suncor, a Canadian counterpart to Sun Oil and currently one of the two largest operations in Alberta's tar sands. Suncor has been independent since 1995.

Sunoco's US refineries process synthetic crude oil from the tar sands. According to a 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer report, a Sunoco-run Ohio refinery processes 100,000 barrels of synthetic crude per day.

The Pew foundation's original mission reflects on "the evils of bureaucracy, the paralyzing effects of government controls on the lives and activities of people, and the values of the free market." Pew money has funded many right-wing Christian groups and conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the John Birch Society, and the American Enterprise Institute.

In the early 1990s, the Pew Trusts began funding environmental groups.

Since 2003, Pew has spent about $41 million on programs on the Canadian boreal forest. Much of this money went environmental and aboriginal groups, and came into Canada via through the Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI). CBI is technically a project of Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group operating in the US and Canada, though this relationship is not stated in materials on CBI's web site. CBI has no board of directors, and no official status as an organization other than its affiliation with Ducks Unlimited. Critics point out that there that this leaves no mechanism for holding CBI accountable for how it uses its money.

According to Executive Director Larry Innes, CBI gives out approximately $2 million per year, though the figure varies. The money is disbursed in roughly equal measure to conservation NGOs and aboriginal groups. Suncor, among others, is listed as one of CBI's "industry partners."

Does the money have an effect on the groups' agenda? "Our role is convener and talent scout," says Innes. CBI's aim is to be "in a position to advance conservation objectives." In many cases, CBI sets up meetings between industry, aboriginal groups and conservationists in order to establish common priorities.

Lindsay Telfer, director of the Sierra Club's Prairie Region, which has received CBI funding in the past, says that groups need to be careful with funding sources.

"Is there a risk that some environmental groups are going to go down a more conservative path because they get funding? I don't doubt that," Telfer told the Dominion. "We have to keep our eyes on our mandates and our goals."

"I believe I've lost funding because of our positions on the tar sands, but where I've lost it, I've picked it up in other places," says Telfer. "It's a difficult debate, because in some ways all money is dirty money."

"The question to ask is, 'Are there ties to how that money is being spent?'"

Cizek says his critique of Pew funding "doesn't have to do with whether money is tainted, but whether a funder directly interferes with the agenda of an environmental organization."

"The Pew Charitable Trusts have consistently set up front groups" that act as a drag on the overall demands of environmental groups, Cizek says.

He sees a "pattern of funding from CBI" corresponding to "a pattern of incredible timidity among the mainstream environmental organizations, who don't seem to be able to take a principled stand on anything." Cizek notes that Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) and the World Wildlife Federation (WWF), two major recipients of CBI funding listed as "partners" in CBI's TV ads, have taken a "low-hanging fruit" strategy of lobbying for protection of areas that are of little interest to industry.

Innes says CBI was founded to address a "tremendous opportunity to do development differently in Canada." The opportunity, Innes say, is the culmination of a series of trends in conservation work: the recognition of treaty rights, the willingness of some corporations to embrace "sustainable practices," and the trend among conservationists to protect entire areas instead of chasing biodiversity "hotspots".

"It's one thing to walk in as an environmental group" and speak to policymakers, says Innes, "and another thing to walk in as an environmental group, shoulder to shoulder with First Nations and industry representatives and saying, 'we've got a solution.'"

The CBI is "pretty up-front about wanting to protect at least half of Canada's boreal, and do responsible management where development is going to occur," says Innes.

It's this industry-friendly approach to conservation that many activists object to. The problem with the consensus-building approach, critics say, is that avoiding conflict with corporations means that the fundamental problems with mining or logging that provoked popular resistance in the first place are not addressed.

"In the 1970s and 1980s a vibrant, truly grassroots public land protection movement emerged--first in the West and then nation-wide," writes Felice Pace of Oregon's Ancient Forest Campaign in a 2004 article. "During the 1990s Pew, with support from other foundations, moved decisively to control this movement."

"Pew favors concentrating on 'low hanging fruit,'" writes Pace. "That is, wilderness areas which local congressmen and senators are eager to support because they are not controversial."

In his 1996 book Washington Babylon, US-based author Alex Cockburn noted that "the Pew Trusts' endowment is wisely invested in the very corporations that a vigorous environmental movement would adamantly be opposing."

"In its initial National Forest Campaign, Pew demanded that recipients of grant money agree to focus their attention on government actions; corporate wrongdoers were not to be named. This extreme plan was modified after some recipients balked."

Cockburn writes that just one of the Pew Trusts made $205 million in "investment income" in 1993 from investments in companies like Weyerhaeuser, International Paper, and Atlantic Richfield. Cockburn notes that at the time this was "six times as large as all of Pew's environmental dispensations." Today, however, Pew is reportedly not as heavily invested in resources extraction.

A more recent attempt at cooperation between industry, First Nations and environmentalists in British Columbia has recently drawn the ire of grassroots activists. In 2006, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network and ForestEthics celebrated a major agreement for the preservation of the Great Bear Rainforest. A year later, however, logging companies have ramped up clearcut logging to levels that are "unprecedented in 15 years," in order to gather as much timber as possible before the agreement takes effect in 2009. To make matters worse, "ecosystem-based management" techniques named in the agreement have yet to be defined. Meanwhile, environmental groups agreed to stop the direct action campaign that had previously halted logging, enabling the sped-up clearcutting to continue unimpeded.

“They made the Central Coast an environmental-protest-free zone,” Nuxalk hereditary chief Qwatsinas told the Dominion earlier this year. (See A Clearcut Answer?) “They’ve given away too much. It takes time to get the market campaign, the boycott campaign going again. Think about those strengths that were given up -- the power that they had in making demands, but it’s gone now. What else can they use?”

"We've found organized, institutional environmentalism has failed over the last four years to accomplish anything," forest campaigner Ingmar Lee told the Dominion. "The successes have come from individual grassroots efforts that have basically bypassed the entrenched, bureaucratic, environmental institutions that have been sucking up the enviro-buck and just not getting the kind of accomplishments we need."

Cizek agrees. "In the US," he says, "it has been pointed out that the organizations that are taking a principled stand are the community organizations, the ones whose neighbourhoods are being destroyed." The "Big Greens," says Cizek, often serve to tell local groups that they're asking the impossible, but when proven wrong, take credit for their achievements.

"And they often win the biggest victories."

"Victories," says Cizek, "will not be achieved in Washington, DC, or in Ottawa. They will be achieved on the front lines. The people on the front lines are the ones who are under attack directly. They're not policy wonks trying to figure out what public opinion will tolerate. For them, it's a matter of survival, in many cases it's a matter of life or death."

When discussing the tar sands, Cizek says that the groups receiving CBI funding have been extremely timid. CPAWS, WWF, Pembina, the Sierra Club and others signed a statement calling for a "carbon neutral" tar sands by 2020 through the purchase of "carbon offsets," but said nothing about slowing down or stopping tar sands development itself. A short time later, the Sierra Club called for a moratorium on tar sands development. But it was only after arch-conservative former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed called for a moratorium that CPAWS and Pembina followed suit. WWF Canada has remained silent, though its UK counterpart has recently called for a moratorium.

"To their utter embarassment, the big greens found themselves trailing far behind the curve of public opinion," says Cizek, "and had to scramble to catch up." But the moratorium on new developments, according to Cizek, still does not address the damage that will be done to the water and land by operations that have already been approved.

Groups in Canada that have received money from the Pew Charitable Trusts via the Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI), according to CBI director Larry Innes:

Boreal Forest Network
Center for Science in Public Participation
CPAWS
Ducks Unlimited
David Suzuki Foundation
Ecotrust Canada
Fondation de la faune
Forest Ethics
Forest Stewardship Council of Canada
Global Forest Watch
Manitoba Wildlands
Miningwatch
Nature Canada
Nature Conservancy of Canada
Nature Quebec
Northwatch
Ontario Nature
Pembina Institute
Protected Areas Association of Newfoundland & Labrador
Reseau Quebecois Groups des Ecologistes
Saskatchewan Environmental Society
Sierra Legal Defense Fund
Silva Forest Foundation
SNAP
The Sustainability Network
The Wild Foundation
Western Canada Wilderness Committee
Western Newfoundland Model Forest
Wildlands League
Wildlife Conservation Society
World Wildlife Fund
Yukon Conservation Society

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
Bloodvein First Nation
Carrier Sekani Tribal Council
Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources
Dehcho First Nations
Grassy Narrows First Nation
Innu Nation
Kaska Dena Council
Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation
Little Grand Rapids First Nation
Little Red River Cree First Nation
Lutsel’ke Dene First Nation
Moose Cree First Nation
Mistissini Cree First Nation
National Aboriginal Forestry Association
Nishnawbe Aski Nation
Pauingassi First Nation
Poplar River First Nation
Prince Albert Grand Council
Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta
Treaty 8 Tribal Association (BC)
West Moberly First Nation

CPAWS did not respond to an interview request, and a WWF representative declined to be interviewed.

"This is a very high-level political process that's going on," he adds. "This is about cutting closed back-room deals at the very political top, and allowing the environmentalists to achieve some concessions through dealings at the political top to manage their dissent into appropriate channels, so that the industries maintain their right to operate."

Sierra Club's Lindsay Telfer says that too much time is spent denouncing others within environmental and social justice circles. "That's something I've always found frustrating--divisiveness," says Telfer. "I'm more than supportive of other groups that call for more than what the Sierra Club calls for."

Telfer also comes to the defense of those who call for less. "I don't buy into the arguments that CBI is all bad, that Pew is all bad," says Telfer. "I try not to get involved in the infighting." She says she would take money from the CBI in the future if it fits the needs of a particular campaign. "If we're fundraising for a project that has specific goals, I'll take money from people who support those goals," though she adds that the Sierra Club has strict standards concerning who it accepts money from.

Cizek sees a need for a "profound dialogue about the democratic and non-democratic aspects of environmental organizations." Many environmental organizations are private non-profits with few accountability mechanisms. The WWF, for example, has only subscribers, no members. The Pembina Institute, he says, takes money directly from oil companies, to which it sells carbon credits. The Sierra Club is "one of the more democratic of these environmental organizations," he says, and that is "perhaps why they were able to initially take a more principled stand" on projects like the tar sands and the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline.

But he emphasizes that "it's not about quibbling about calling for a moratorium or a shut down," but "what were the processes by which you came to this point, and how might your funders have influenced this decision? What do they actually expect to settle for?"

"Do they actually believe in this insane program of the tar sands becoming carbon neutral by purchasing carbon offsets?," he asks, referring to a statement signed by several groups before Lougheed called for a moratorium.

The CBI's Larry Innes says that the issue of accountability is "an interesting question." His response to it is candid.

"We're accountable to those people who write us a cheque every year," says Innes. "If we don't achieve the kind of goals that they're interested in spending their money on, the funding stops."

For Innes, "a more interesting question is why we need US funding at all. Why is the environmental movement in Canada so small and poorly funded? Where is all the Canadian money? Why aren't Canadian philanthropists (with a few notable exceptions) investing in Canada's environmental and social justice movements?"

Depending on which explanation of foundation funding one finds more convincing, what CBI is accountable for accomplishing and why Canadians aren't providing the same levels of funding to conservationists will have very different answers.

Open Pits

Scars

Dene Tha' to take MacKenzie pipeline to court

Mon, 08 May 2006 11:55:59 +0000

A Dene First Nation in Alberta is going to federal court to block one of the biggest energy projects in Alberta's history–-the giant Mackenzie Valley pipeline--reports CBC News. The Dene Tha' say they weren't properly consulted about the project and are worried the gas pipeline will ruin their way of life.

According to Briarpatch Magazine, the pipeline system will traverse protected wildlife sanctuaries, disturbing migratory patterns and traditional hunting areas. These developments will contribute to the deterioration of cultures that depend on the land.

The Dene Tha' have long been resisting attempts to subvert their sovereignty in the North. Today, many Dene Tha' are questioning the entire process of industrializing their land for the benefit of southern oil companies.

Tom Laviolette, a local resident of Hay River Northwest Territories was quoted in Briarpatch. "If this pipeline goes ahead then our people are not only going to suffer from not being able to hunt, fish and trap on our land; we will eventually lose control of our land. It will be destroyed by oil and mining companies."

Deh Cho take Pipeline Review Board to court over reversal

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:15:45 +0000

The Deh Cho First Nation is taking the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board to court over the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline, CBC North reports.

The case has been brought to the Northwest Territories Supreme Court because of the way the board handled agreements related to the right-of-way for the proposed $7 billion Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline.

The board initially said Imperial Oil had to enter into agreements with five Deh Cho communities to address the social and cultural impacts of the pipeline. The board later reversed this decision.

The Deh Cho First Nation is asking the court to cancel the reversal since it was based on Department of Indian Affairs information,to which they had neither access nor a chance to respond.

The head of Imperial's Mackenzie Valley Gas Project recently told the NWT chiefs that the proposed pipeline was well on its way to becoming a reality.

Chief Kenya Norwegian of the Deh Cho isn't so sure. The company, she said, has failed to reach an agreement with the Deh Cho First Nation. "My concern is you are moving forward and not respecting us as the Dene people of the land," Norwegian said, as reported by CBC North.

Hillary Bain Lindsay

Who Owns The Climate?

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 19:38:30 +0000

Indigenous leaders demand a voice in climate change negotiations

Indigenous peoples are disproportionately impacted by climate change. photo credit: Dru Oja Jay

The solutions to climate change must involve Indigenous people, insists Tom Goldtooth, Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), an organization that amplifies the voices of grassroots Indigenous activists fighting for environmental justice. According to Goldtooth, Indigenous people are disproportionately impacted by climate change and should have a central role in any proposed solutions. "We have wisdom from people who have lived on the land and have certain knowledge that can provide solutions to this dilemma."

For the past seven years the IEN has been demanding a formal mechanism that would allow Indigenous peoples to officially participate in International Climate Change Negotiations. At the most recent round of talks, held in Montreal between November 28th and December 9th, the demand has been met with indifference. Goldtooth says that the climate change solutions being proposed by governments are stuck in a paradigm that is disconnected from the planet it purports to fix.

"They [government leaders] come from an industrialized mindset that looks at technical or market-based solutions. We're saying that we have to look at the values that have gotten us into this situation. Industrialization separates community from nature."

Carbon trading - a system that allows polluters who emit more than their limit of greenhouse gases to buy carbon credits from those who pollute less - is an example of a market based approach that Goldtooth believes will not work because it fails to address the root causes of the problem. "As Indigenous People we view Mother Earth as sacred. For people to really address these issues we have to reevaluate our relationship to the sacredness of Mother Earth."

Clayton Thomas-Muller, Native Energy Organizer for the IEN, agrees, adding that some of these "solutions" are actually making things worse. "We believe that these market based approaches escalate the on-the-ground impacts for poor, disenfranchised communities." Thomas-Muller cites the example of eucalyptus plantations in the global south. Polluters who are emitting above their limit can now claim carbon credits for creating monoculture plantations that act as "carbon sinks." According to Thomas-Muller, these plantations have done more than absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; they have also "wreaked havoc" on the fragile biodiversity of the region and displaced indigenous communities from the land that has been their source of food and has been integral to their way of life.

It is not surprising, says Thomas-Muller, that Indigenous Peoples are being disproportionately impacted by climate change "solutions," since they have also been disproportionately impacted by its causes.

Major oil industries, strip mining, and huge hydro projects are often situated on or near First Nations' land. "Our culture is based on a healthy relationship with Mother Earth," says Thomas-Muller. "When you have landscape fracturing industries, they not only destroy that relationship, they also create a lot of other problems." Thomas-Muller believes that the money these industries bring into communities is over-rated. "What jobs do our people get? They get the toxic jobs, the dangerous jobs. Drugs come into the community."

The Mackenzie Valley Project, a proposed 1220 km natural gas pipeline, is the most recent initiative that is promising to bring wealth to Indigenous communities–and add to the problem of climate change. Many First Nations people, including The Arctic Youth Alliance, a grassroots group made up of youth from across Denendeh and the Beaufort Delta in the Northwest Territories, are resisting the project. However, there are others that are welcoming the project. The Aboriginal Pipeline Group (APG) - founded by 30 Aboriginal leaders in the Northwest Territories to maximize the ownership and benefits of Aboriginal Peoples in the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline - has partnered with Imperial Oil, ConocoPhillips, Shell Canada and Exxon Mobil to bring the project to fruition. The APG website proudly states that " This is the first time that Aboriginal groups in Canada will participate as an owner in a major, multi-billion dollar industrial project."

Goldtooth is not surprised that many First Nations people are welcoming oil and gas development. He points out that many of these communities are devastated by poverty and the promise of money and jobs are hard to resist. Even so, he has grave doubts that partnering with multinational corporations on oil and gas development will bring good to Indigenous communities.

"What we are experiencing right now is that some of our tribal chiefs are negotiating with these ruthless unaccountable corporations in the world of petropolitics. It scares a lot of our Indigenous people and our grassroots, who are very cautious of these big money deals," explains Goldtooth. "Because it's not going to benefit our people - over the long run. It's a boom-bust society. How many years of oil or natural gas we have left?"

While climate change is threatening the future existence of the oil and gas industry, Indigenous cultures are being deeply impacted by climate change today. "Cultural ethnocide is being committed on Indigenous Nations," says Thomas-Muller. He argues that changes in the Earth's climate are wreaking havoc on Indigenous cultures which are based on a direct connection to nature and living off the land. The warming in the North, for example, is changing caribou migrations and hunting seasons, not to mention the frozen landscape on which people live.

In the face of cultural and environmental devastation, Indigenous peoples are turning to the courts. In December 2005 a petition was filed with the Washington, DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights seeking relief from violations of the human rights of Inuit resulting from global warming. The United States isn't the only one in the hot-seat, however, says Thomas-Muller. "More and more our First Nations and Aboriginal groups in this country are gaining legal footing. Our legal base and collective understanding of law and our rights are expanding. More and more you will see landmark decisions being won in the Supreme Court by Aboriginal groups which give us say about what happens on or near our traditional homelands."

At the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, Aboriginal groups were not given a say about what happens to their land or their people, says Goldtooth who remains determined to fight for just solutions to climate change. "We're going to get through this but we need to involve the people out there right now," he adds. "The people are basically locked out."

Indigenous peoples demand a voice in climate change negotiations that are disproportionately impacting them. Hillary Lindsay listens in.

"It's the Best We've Got"

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 22:00:13 +0000

Kyoto Off To A Slow Late Start in Montreal

Environment Minister Stéphane Dion will be chairing upcoming international climate talks.

Jon Bennett, Director of Climate Action Network, is not prone to praise when discussing the international process to address climate change, "It is very slow. It is very laborious. It has its own timetable and doesn't respect the reality and urgency of what it's trying to deal with. However," he adds, "it has moved forward. And it's the best we've got."

Whether "the best we've got" will be enough to halt and reverse dangerous climate change remains to be seen. Since 160 countries agreed to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997—an international treaty that requires countries around the world to cut emissions that cause climate change—global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, and Canada has been no exception. In fact, Canada has frequently been accused of blocking progress at the United Nations Climate Change Negotiations. According to Bennett, this has often been due to the country's attempt to pander to the demands of the United States.

President Bush has close ties with the oil industry, explains Bennett. "He is the US's oil advocate to stop the rest of us from weaning off fossil fuels." In attempting to please the Americans and protect its own interests, "Canada has supported a lot of conditions that the environmental community has not appreciated."

It was only when the United States announced that it would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol—and Canada ratified it anyway—that Canada's role in international negotiations began to shift. "Everyone knows that Canada is connected both economically and physically to the US, so it was a really big step to go ahead and ratify without them," explains Bennett. "It gave Canada a great deal of respect in the international community."

Those who want action on climate change are hoping this new trend will continue when Canada assumes the role of Chair at the next round of international climate change talks. From November 28th until December 9th, Montreal will be hosting the 11th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 1st Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (otherwise known as CoP11/MoP1). The talks are important, as they are the first to occur since the Kyoto Protocol entered into force in February of this year.

Environment Minister Stéphane Dion will be hosting the negotiations, and according to Matthew Bramely, Climate Change Director at the Pembina Institute, Dion has shown promising signs that he will take the role of Chair seriously. A speech given on behalf of the Minister at the Cologne Carbon Expo stated, "CoP11/MoP1 will be an important meeting, and we need to set the bar high…. Canada is firmly engaged in the global effort to address climate change and is determined to play a leadership role in the search for long-term solutions."

As Canada's greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise far above Kyoto targets, however, the country's commitment to addressing climate change may come into question in Montreal. "Will Dion be able to exert the leadership he needs to in light of Canada's progress on greenhouse gas emission reductions?" asks Bramely. Considering the urgency and complexity of negotiations, both Bramely and Bennett are hoping he will.

Dion will have to negotiate several delicate and critical matters as Chair, says Bennett, one being the problem of Protocol compliance. The Kyoto Protocol is legally binding, but to date there has been no agreement on how to enforce compliance. "There is the possibility of a having a system of penalties and fines [for those countries that do not meet Kyoto Protocol targets]," explains Bennett. "The problem is that any country can withdraw from the Protocol with one year's notice." The result is the regrettable situation in which it makes more economic sense for a country to withdraw from the treaty than to try to reach its Kyoto goal but fail.

The question of Protocol compliance will be an especially delicate one for Dion, considering Canada's poor progress on emission reductions thus far. By 2012, industrialized countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol should have collectively decreased greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2% below 1990 levels. Canada's emissions are now 20% higher than they were in 1990.

The reasons for the painfully slow progress are complex, says Bramely, and closely tied to the global economic system. "Greenhouse gas emissions go to the heart of an energy economy. Any constraints on emissions lead to constraints on the energy industry, and that underpins the whole economy." As a result, says Bramely, the industry—specifically coal and oil— is lobbying hard to protect its interests.

In a recent New York Times article on the environmental impact of the Alberta oil sands and the expected sextupling of the current daily production—of 1 million barrels of oil a day—by 2030, Minister Dion admitted, "There is no environmental minister on earth who can stop the oil from coming out of the sand, because the money is too big."

Whatever big money is saying, big science—or what Dion himself calls "the most authoritative scientific advisory body on climate change science in the world," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—has been saying the same thing for years. Humans are causing climate change, and unless we seriously curb our emissions, we're in big trouble. "The science is telling us that if we're to prevent dangerous climate change we need to achieve reductions in emissions of 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 and 25% below 1990 levels by 2020," says Bramely.

Bramely hopes Dion will keep these kinds of targets in mind when he kick-starts talks for the post 2012 emission reduction targets. But right now, there are no actual targets. Coming to consensus on what they should be, and who should commit to them, could prove rather difficult, considering that some countries, like Canada, have not yet met their first set of targets; other countries that have contributed the least to climate change, like Bangladesh, are suffering the most; up-and-coming developing countries, like India and China, are still plagued by poverty but poised to surpass the United States as leading emitters; and the United States is doing everything it can to destroy the process altogether.

Despite the overwhelming challenge, however, both Bramely and Bennett are genuinely optimistic. The tide has turned, they say. It is now no longer a question of if, but when.

If "when" proves soon enough to halt and reverse climate change, "it will go down in history as one of the greatest achievements of humankind," says Bennett.

Environment Minister Stéphane Dion to chair next round of international climate talks in Montreal. Hillary Lindsay reports.