Stamp prices rise for the third time in five years amid financial woes for Canada Post
Canada Post is increasing stamp prices for the third time since 2019, a move the Crown corporation says is a "reality" of its sales-based revenue structure.
The leaders of most of the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters gather in Glasgow from Sunday, aiming to thrash out plans and funds to tilt the planet towards clean energy. But the man running the biggest of them all likely won't be there.
Chinese President Xi Jinping's expected absence from the talks could indicate that the world's biggest CO2 producer has already decided that it has no more concessions to offer at the UN COP26 climate summit in Scotland after three major pledges since last year, climate watchers said.
Instead, China will likely be represented by vice-environment minister Zhao Yingmin along with the veteran Xie Zhenhua, who was reappointed as the country's top climate envoy earlier this year following a three-year hiatus.
"One thing is clear," said Li Shuo, senior climate adviser with Greenpeace in Beijing. "COP26 needs high-level support from China as well as other emitters.
The head of the world's third-biggest source of climate-warming emissions, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has committed to attending the COP26 summit, which runs from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12. Like other leaders, he will come under pressure from summit organizers to commit to quicker emissions cuts and set a target date to reach carbon neutrality - a target set by Xi for 2060 in a surprise move last year.
But China will be unwilling to be seen yielding to international pressure for more ambitious goals, according to one environmental consultant, especially as it grapples with a crippling energy supply crunch https://www.reuters.com/world/china/what-is-behind-chinas-power-crunch-2021-09-29 at home. Beijing is "already maxed out," said the consultant, speaking on condition of anonymity citing the sensitivity of the matter.
Though there has been no official announcement, analysts and diplomatic sources said few had been expecting Xi to attend COP26 in person. He has already missed several high-profile global summits since the COVID-19 outbreak began in late 2019, and didn't physically attend the Global Biodiversity Conference in China's Kunming earlier this month.
They also said Xi was unlikely to lend his physical presence - a virtual video appearance remains a possibility - to a meeting that had little prospect of any significant breakthrough, especially after China brushed off U.S. attempts to treat climate as a 'standalone' issue that could be separated from the broader diplomatic disputes between the two sides.
Rather than making more concessions, China and India's top priority is to secure a strong financing deal allowing richer countries to meet their Paris Agreement commitment to provide $100 billion per year to help pay for climate adaptation and transfer clean technology in the developing world. Xi did attend the Paris summit in person in 2015.
Although Xi has not traveled outside China since before the pandemic, he has made three major climate announcements on the international stage.
His unexpected net zero commitment came in a video address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2020. That announcement encouraged enterprises, industry sectors and even other countries to respond with their own net-zero action plans.
Xi also said in a message to the U.S.-led Leaders Summit on Climate in April that China would start cutting coal consumption by 2026. And he used this year's UNGA to announce an immediate end to overseas coal financing, a major bone of contention.
Like India, China has been under pressure to add more ambition to its updated "nationally determined contributions" (NDCs) on climate change, which are due to be announced before the Glasgow talks begin.
However, the revisions are expected to focus on implementing the targets that have already been announced, rather than making them more ambitious.
China has repeatedly stressed that its climate policies are designed to serve its own domestic priorities, and will not be pursued at the expense of national security and public welfare.
Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Beijing-based non-government group that monitors corporate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, said China already had enough climate challenges to deal with and has little leeway to go further in Glasgow.
"With all the headwinds and all the pledges that have been made, it is important to take stock and consolidate," he said.
"It's not enough to put these (commitments) on paper," he added. "We have to translate them into solid actions."
(Reporting by David Stanway; Additional reporting by Neha Arora in New Delhi; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
Canada Post is increasing stamp prices for the third time since 2019, a move the Crown corporation says is a "reality" of its sales-based revenue structure.
Defence lawyers for Jeremy Skibicki have told the court the accused unlawfully caused the death of four women, but argue he is not criminally responsible due to mental disorder.
H5N1 or avian flu is decimating wildlife around the world and is now spreading among cattle in the United States, sparking concerns about 'pandemic potential' for humans. Now a health expert is urging Canada to scale up surveillance north of the border.
Italy's mafia rarely dirties its hands with blood these days. Extortion rackets have gone out of fashion and murders are largely frowned upon by the godfathers.
After his adopted parents died, Dave Rogers set out to learn more about his birth mother. DNA results and a little help from friendly strangers would put him on a path to a small town in England.
The judge presiding over Donald Trump's hush money trial fined him US$1,000 on Monday for violating his gag order once again and sternly warned the former president that additional violations could result in jail time.
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Researchers in Israel are turning to artificial intelligence to comb through piles of records to try to identify hundreds of thousands of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust whose names are missing from official memorials.
Russia plans to hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons, the Defense Ministry announced Monday, days after the Kremlin reacted angrily to comments by senior Western officials about the war in Ukraine and Moscow warned that tensions with the West are deepening.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.