The Canadian government has been pretty lousy on this front. They have been supporting oil sands production, and lobbying against efforts to limit the use of oil shale energy in certain american states. They've also been at the forefront of undermining the international treaty, they've been even more strident than the Obama administration in demanding that it be watered down.
This website has lists of protests across the world. Find one near you and go to it. http://www.350.org/
I should explain a bit about the 350 target. It's been endorsed by James Hansen, among others. Throughout the history of human civilization (ie. not that long on a planetary scale), global temperature has stayed pretty constant, and so has CO2, at around 280PPM. During longer history, CO2 has varied between 200 in ice ages, and 280 in interglacials. Note that just that 80 PPM difference was enough to go from an ice age to where we are now.
Well, we're now at 387, which is more than 100 PPM higher than the norm. We're already seeing effects, particularly in the arctic. Note that the full extent of warming from the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere won't be felt for a couple of decades more, as it takes time for the full effect to occur.
Meaning that even if we stopped all CO2 emissions tomorrow, we'd still have more warming. Quite possibly enough to take us past natural tipping points which would cause more warming, such as:
1. Ice melting, and the darker ground/ocean exposed beneath reflects less light, causing more warming.
2. Permafrost melting, releasing methane, an extremely powerful (though somewhat short lived )greenhouse gas.
3. Methane frozen at the bottom of the ocean melts, releasing itself into the atmosphere.
4. Forests such as the Amazon die, releasing CO2.
We already have number one occuring at a large scale, number two has been occuring at a small scale, there are scattered reports of number three. I'm less sure about number four, though deserts are spreading.
These effects are already beginning at our current level of CO2 PPM, and before the full amount of warming from that CO2 concentration has occured.
The current target that developed nations are discussing is keeping CO2 below 450 PPM. They don't look set to achieve even that, but ignore that for a moment. If we emit 63 more PPM (almost the difference between an ice age and a normal human climate), we may well face enough warming to push us past these tipping points. This will release even more CO2, causing more warming, causing more CO2 release, and there's not much we'll be able to do about any of that.
So, simply put, the best efforts of the international community don't look to be nearly good enough. That's why many are calling for 350 as a target. We've already past it, but that's sort of the point. We've already got too much CO2 in the atmosphere. Current proposals of 450 PPM call for allowing even more.
People and governments need to realize that this won't do, and that the correct target is backwards. There are a few things we can do to lower CO2 concentrations, such as allowing more forests to grow, or sowing biochar in farmers fields (google it). But we must also make massive efforts to slow and then stop our emissions.
It you want to know more about any of this, or if part of it wasn't clear, feel free to ask questions.
And, go find a rally today, and show your support. Your future quite literally depends on cutting CO2 emissions today.
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