First, the city had the spectacle of actor and activist Jane Fonda, environmentalist David Suzuki and author-activist Naomi Klein leading a march of some 12,000 protesters through downtown streets on July 5. From all accounts, they were a cheerful bunch.

Later in the week, a much angrier group of some 200 protestors succeeded for a short time in blocking a lot of high-level delegates to the Climate Summit of the Americas from entering the Fairmont Royal York Hotel.

More than 300 delegates from 20 countries claimed to be urging governments to come forward with meaningful promises to reduce carbon emissions before the blockbuster UN Climate Summit in Paris this December.

But the chain of events was practically identical to those of would-be effective actions in dozens of locations across Canada in recent years.

The script

Star celebrity speaks confidently to reporters: “I think that the coalition that is represented in today’s march and rally … will make a difference,” Jane Fonda told reporters. Hmmm, heard that one before. And aren’t we a little late organizing?

Radical protesters berate delegates: During the protest at the hotel, the crowd chanted “shut down the summit” and was blocked by dozens of police. Been there.

Summit participants sign meaningless statement: At the close of the summit, hundreds of delegates signed a non-binding, motherhood statement urging jurisdictions around the world to make carbon-reduction commitments and present them in Paris. Same old. Totally meaningless.

Politicians seize the moment for political gain: The meetings turned into a news op for political opportunism, with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, Ontario Environment Minister Glen Murray, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and even California Governor Jerry Brown taking turns tearing strips off Stephen Harper, whose government was not represented at the meetings. Normal behaviour.

Powerful corporations lurk in the background: While politicians take the heat for failing to act effectively on climate change, giant corporations, including Shell and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, steered discussions toward their favourite and less productive but profit-making carbon-reduction scheme. Isn’t this like just about everything these days?

Mainstream media fails to go beyond the speeches: The papers, TV and radio news dutifully reported the politicians’ rants. But a Google search failed to turned up a mainstream news report that provided any analysis of the event or that explained the extremely serious threat that climate change presents. No surprise! Mainstream media must be held largely responsible for the fact that only 50 per cent of Canadians were “extremely” or “definitely” concerned about the climate threat in a national poll.
Conflicting and ineffective activities have been repeated around the globe during the many years we have known that climate change is a serious threat to humankind. Year after year conditions only get worse.

The Climate Summit was a massive, expensive and cynical public relations stunt for many of the participating politicians. We all would be better off if the wasted money had been spent on a practical carbon-reduction program in Africa, the continent that has the fewest resources and will suffer the most.

Politicians mislead the public

As often happens at such conferences, politicians mislead the public because they don’t want to be held responsible for their own failures.

Premier Couillard, trying to convey that everything is going to be alright, said Quebec is committing itself “to a very ambitious set of targets with only one objective: to keep warming below or at the maximum 2 degrees Celsius by 2050.”

But sorry Philippe, according to a lot of scientists, keeping the average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius — which has been the rabbit-out-of-a-hat goal for years — is pretty much impossible.

Because of the melting of the icecaps, we’re already on our way to surpassing 2 degrees, says the highly regarded and independent Union of Concerned Scientists. The melting of the icecaps cannot be reversed.
If governments do not strengthen policies dramatically, the world will be on a path to an average temperature increase of 2.6° C by 2100 and 3.5° C after 2200, the International Energy Agency said in June. This translates into an average temperature rise of 4.3 C over land in the northern hemisphere where most of the world’s population lives, and even more in urban areas, according to the IEA.

Yes, this would be catastrophic.

It’s impossible to say how massive an effort would be required to keep temperature increases to levels that would allow us to continue living pretty much as we do now. We can only guess.

Dr. Matania Ginosar, a prominent California environmental scientist, says that “only a global effort larger and more intense than WWII may be able to save the Earth’s environment from destruction.”

Enormous pressure will be put on many of the 196 countries taking part in the much-anticipated United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris in December. They will try to come up with some sort of agreement or understanding that will allow an orchestrated attack on greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2020.

But the UN process has been under way for 20 years now and, because of its repeated failure to advance the climate agenda, cannot be considered an overall success. One serious problem has been that powerful corporations have used their influence and money to move into a powerful position in the process. So far they have helped prevent the kind of progress required.

In one major way, the Paris Summit is already a failure before it even begins. UN officials involved with the talks are already saying that whatever is accomplished in Paris alone, it will not hold global warming to less than 2° Celsius.

Embarrassed when the crucial Copenhagen talks ended in chaos and vicious attacks, leaders such as U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao won’t attend the Paris Summit. Only high-level ministers will be there.

Given the seriousness of the crisis as it is being discussed internationally and at the UN, it is difficult to understand how Toronto’s protests and climate talks were able to be so meaningless. It seems that a lot of Canadians are well off the mark in terms of having any impact on climate change and dealing with the reality of what could lie ahead.