The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-28)

A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, MAY 28 , 2022

BY AMANDA COLETTA

toronto — The Canadian Su-
preme Court ruled Friday that a
federal law that effectively autho-
rizes life imprisonment without
parole is unconstitutional, find-
ing that it violates protections
against cruel and unusual pun-
ishment and brings “the admin-
istration of justice into disre-
pute.”
“Such sentences are degrading
in nature and thus incompatible
with human dignity,” the court
said in a unanimous decision,
“because they deny offenders any
possibility of reintegration into
society, which presupposes, de-
finitively and irreversibly, that
they lack the capacity to reform
and reenter society.”
The psychological effects, it
concluded, “are in some respects
comparable to those experienced
by inmates on death row, since
only death will end their incar-
ceration.”
The ruling was highly antici-
pated here, in part because of the
offender at its center: Alexandre
Bissonnette, the man who killed
six people at a Quebec City
mosque in 2017. The top court
sentenced him to life without the
possibility of parole for 25 years.
Prosecutors initially sought a

sentence of life without parole

for 150 years.

But the impact of the decision

extends well beyond Bissonnette.

A man found guilty on 10 charges

of first-degree murder after ram-

ming a white rental truck into

unsuspecting pedestrians on a

major Toronto thoroughfare in

2018 has not yet been sentenced,

pending the outcome of this case.

The Supreme Court said its

declaration of invalidity is retro-

active to the date the 2011 law

was enacted, meaning those who

have been sentenced under the

statute can now seek relief. They

include the man who killed three

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

officers in 2014 and was sen-

tenced to life without parole for

75 years.

All U.S. states except Alaska

authorize life without parole, ac-

cording to a 2021 report from the

Sentencing Project, which found

that over 80 percent of people

serving life without parole in the

world are in U.S. prisons.

In 1967, when Canada abol-

ished the death penalty, it set life

imprisonment with no chance at

parole for 25 years as the manda-

tory sentence for adults convict-

ed of first-degree murder. The

parole ineligibility periods for

offenders convicted of multiple

murders were to be served con-

currently.

That changed in 2011, when

Parliament passed a law giving

judges the ability to stack parole

ineligibility periods of 25 years

for each murder conviction, so

that they were served consecu-

tively. It meant offenders could

effectively be sentenced to life

without parole or to sentences

longer than the human life span.

Bissonnette, armed with a

semiautomatic weapon and a

pistol, opened fire on 46 people

gathered for evening prayers at a

Quebec City mosque in 2017,

killing half a dozen and severely

injuring others. At his trial, pros-

ecutors claimed his attack was

premeditated. They alleged that

he had spent time online re-

searching the Ku Klux Klan, oth-

er mass shootings and their per-

petrators and had frequently

checked the Twitter accounts of

conspiracy theorists and far-

right figures.

Bissonnette told police that he

was motivated by a pledge from

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to

welcome those “fleeing persecu-

tion, terror and war” regardless

of their faith, a message that

Trudeau tweeted after President

Donald Trump imposed a U.S.

entry ban on people from seven

Muslim-majority countries.

Bissonnette pleaded guilty in

2018 to six counts of first-degree

murder. Prosecutors in Quebec

asked for a life sentence without

the possibility of parole for

150 years, six consecutive parole

ineligibility periods of 25 years

for each victim.

Quebec Superior Court Justice

Francois Huot wrote in his deci-

sion that the date of the mosque

attack “will forever be written in

blood in the history of this city,

this province and this country.”

But he found the 2011 law “gross-

ly disproportionate and totally

incompatible with human digni-

ty.”

“Canada,” Huot wrote, “is not a

country where we lock up the

most undesirable elements of

society in a dungeon, toss the key

to their freedom into the wide

river of collective indifference

and then forget about their very

existence.”

He ordered Bissonnette to

serve five ineligibility periods of

25 years concurrently and tacked

on 15 years for the sixth victim for

a sentence of life without a

chance at parole for 40 years. In a

later 3-0 decision, a Quebec ap-

peals court said the 2011 law

violated constitutional protec-

tions to not be subjected to cruel

and unusual punishment and the

right to life, liberty and security

of the person. It declared it

unconstitutional and sentenced

Bissonnette to life without parole

for 25 years.

Prosecutors appealed to the

Supreme Court. Civil liberties

groups urged that the law be

struck down. The attorneys gen-

eral of Canada and several prov-

inces, as well as police groups

and relatives of the murder vic-

tims of a notorious Canadian

serial killer, asked the court to

uphold the law.

In legal filings, several of the

parties granted intervenor sta-

tus, similar to “friend of the

court” status in U.S. courts, con-

tended that before the 2011 law,

people convicted of multiple

murders were effectively given a

“free pass” or sentencing “dis-

count” for each additional mur-

der.

The Canadian Association of

Chiefs of Police said Bissonnette

is “the epitome” of a case justify-

ing the need for the law. The

Supreme Court said the “horror

of the crimes ... does not negate

the basic proposition that all

human beings carry within them

a capacity for rehabilitation” and

that its finding “must not be seen

as devaluing the life of each

innocent victim.”

“Everyone would agree that

multiple murders are inherently

despicable acts and are the most

serious crimes,” the court said.

This appeal is “about the limits of

the state’s power to punish of-

fenders, which, in a society

founded on the rule of law, must

be exercised in a manner consis-

tent with the constitution.”

The National Council of Cana-

dian Muslims said in a statement

that the survivors of the mass

shooting and their families will

have their wounds reopened

each time Bissonnette appears

for a parole hearing. “Today, we

are thinking about the families,”

said Mustafa Farooq, the group’s

chief executive. “Their pain has

never fully healed, and their

wounds are reopened today as

they struggle with the possibility

of being among the one who

killed their loved ones that

night.”

David Lametti, Canada’s jus-

tice minister, said in a statement

that he acknowledged the “hurt

and anger” rekindled by the deci-

sion. He said that while the

government supported a judge’s

discretion to lengthen the parole

ineligibility period, it would re-

spect the decision “and carefully

review its implications.”

Canadian high court decides life in prison without parole i s unconstitutional

BY BRADY DENNIS

AND STEVEN MUFSON

Top environmental ministers
from the Group of Seven major
industrial countries agreed Fri-
day to end government financing
for international coal-fired power
generation and to accelerate the
phasing out of unabated coal
plants by the year 2035.
The group said that it would
aim to have “predominantly de-
carbonized electricity sectors by
2035.”
The commitments on the
phaseout of coal plants will par-
ticularly affect Japan, which re-
lies heavily on coal-fired power
plants.
Unabated coal plants include
those that have not yet adopted
technology for capturing and us-
ing carbon dioxide.
The G-7 ministers also said that
new road vehicles in their coun-
tries would be “predominantly”
zero-emissions vehicles by 2030,
and that they plan to accelerate
cuts in the use of Russian natural
gas, which would be replaced by
clean power in the long term.
The private sector in the major
industrial countries must crank
up financing, the ministers said,
moving “from billions to tril-
lions.” The group acknowledged
the need laid out by the Interna-
tional Energy Agency for the G-
economies to invest at least

$1.3 trillion in renewable energy,

tripling investments in clean

power and electricity networks

between 2021 and 2030.

“The G-7 committing to end

public finance for fossil fuels and

shift it to clean is a massive win,”

Bronwen Tucker, public finance

campaign co-manager at Oil

Change International, said in a

statement. “We now need con-

crete action, not just words.”

Friday’s commitments mark

the latest in a global push for

nations — and in particular the

largest and wealthiest ones — to

halt public funding for fossil fuel

projects around the world, and to

help developing countries grow

their economies without relying

on dirty fuels such as coal.

The effort has gained steam in

recent years, even as the transi-

tion to cleaner forms of energy is

not happening nearly as fast as

scientists say is necessary for the

world to meet the goals of the

Paris climate agreement.

At a major U.N. climate confer-

ence last fall in Glasgow, Scot-

land, dozens of countries pledged

to phase out their use of coal.

While nations such as Poland and

Vietnam joined in that pact, some

of the world’s biggest users of the

planet-heating fuel, including

China and the United States, did

not sign on to the agreement.

The United States and nearly

two dozen other nations did,

however, embrace a separate

agreement vowing to stop spend-

ing tax dollars to support interna-

tional fossil fuel projects, a move

the group said would divert

$18 billion a year toward clean

energy.

That promise to restrict public

money for foreign fossil fuel proj-

ects doesn’t affect what countries

do at home. China, Japan and

South Korea, which together

make up nearly half of interna-

tional public funding for fossil

fuel projects, did not join that

agreement at the climate confer-

ence, known as COP26.

While the final pact that nearly

200 nations agreed to in Glasgow

included the first explicit men-

tion of “coal” and “fossil fuel

subsidies,” the language of that

provision was watered down over

the course of the summit. It ulti-

mately called upon nations to

“phase-down” rather than

“phase-out” only “unabated” coal

and “inefficient” fossil fuel subsi-

dies.

Halting the flow of money to

new fossil fuel development is

essential to meeting the world’s

climate goals, activists and ana-

lysts say. Last spring, the Interna-

tional Energy Agency published a

“road map” to zeroing out carbon

emissions by 2050; according to

that plan, there should be no new

development of fossil fuel sup-

plies after that year.

But the world still depends

heavily on fossil fuels, especially

its biggest emitters.

When U.S. greenhouse gas

emissions roared back in 2021

after a brief drop during the early

phase of the coronavirus pan-

demic, a significant factor was a

17 percent surge in coal-fired elec-

tricity, according to an analysis by

the Rhodium Group.

And last November, Chinese

officials reported that their coal

production surged to its highest

level in years, the same day that

officials in India’s capital readied

a shutdown because of air pollu-

tion.

But while the shift has been

slow and uneven, some countries

have forged ahead in their efforts

to scale back their reliance on

fossil fuels.

For instance, the government

in Britain recently proposed a

windfall profits tax in the form of

a 25 percent surcharge on “the

extraordinary profits the oil and

gas sector is making.” It would

raise 5 million pounds that would

go to help citizens pay for the cost

of living. At the same time, the

government is proposing a “super

deduction” to encourage oil and

gas companies to invest in proj-

ects in the United Kingdom. The

deduction would double tax relief

for companies investing in the

United Kingdom, covering 91 per-

cent of those investments.

Alden Meyer, senior associate

at climate think tank E3G, said it

is critical that G-7 leaders find

ways to accelerate the shift to

cleaner energy this decade.

“We needed to see a commit-

ment by G7 countries to fully

decarbonize their electricity sec-

tor and to phase out use of coal by

2030,” he said in an email.

Even as many developed econ-

omies are beginning to move to

cleaner forms of energy and re-

duce their overall emissions over

time, it is in the developing world

that scientists and environmental

advocates say serious funding is

needed to help nations develop in

greener ways and avoid locking in

fossil fuel infrastructure.

The world’s richest nations

have pledged repeatedly to pro-

vide at least $100 billion annually

in climate financing to help poor-

er countries deal with the im-

pacts of climate change and boost

clean energy — even though that

is only a fraction of the funding

needed for such goals.

But the developed world has

yet to fulfill that promise. Even

President Biden, who has asked

for more than $11 billion each

year in such funding, has not

persuaded Congress to provide

such an amount.

Key nations agree to halt government financing for new fossil fuel projects

WOLFGANG RATTAY/REUTERS

Steam rises from the coal power plant cooling towers of RWE, one

of Europe’s biggest power companies, in Niederaussem, Germany.

BY CHRISTIAN SHEPHERD

When China ramped up its reli-
ance on coal-fueled power plants
over fears of an energy crunch,
climate experts were already wor-
ried, but now a study shows that
the renewed mining will boost
levels of methane, a greenhouse
gas even more potent than carbon
dioxide.
The increased production and
expanded capacity from mines is
on track to add 10 percent to
global emissions of coal methane,
threatening to undermine inter-
national efforts to tackle global
warming, according to a recent
estimate by Global Energy Moni-
tor, a nongovernmental organiza-
tion that tracks fossil fuel proj-
ects.
While it is the carbon dioxide
released by burning coal that has
garnered most of the attention in
the fight against climate change,
methane by volume has far larger
effects on atmospheric tempera-
ture in the short term. Over 100
years, the global warming poten-
tial of the colorless and odorless
gas is about 25 times that of
carbon dioxide. Over 20 years, the
impact is about 80 times as large.
The study found that the ef-
forts by China to dig out more coal
had already released about 2.
million tons of additional meth-
ane from mines since late last
year when the government or-
dered more output to end an
energy crunch.
New projects from the mining
boom could add the same produc-
tion capacity as that of Indonesia,
the third-largest coal producer in
the world, and could release
6 million more tons of methane a
year, according to the study. Some
of the projects are mines that will
extract the black rock from deep
underground, a process that pro-
duces more methane than surface

mining.

“China’s frenzy of new mine

development is creating hun-

dreds of new sources of methane

emissions. While making recent

strides to meet its climate goals,

China still needs to reckon with

the potential fallout from a short-

term mining boom,” said Ryan

Driskell Tate, an author of the

study.

Despite China scaling up wind

and solar power sources, thermal

power generators that rely on

burning coal still account for the

majority of the its energy supply.

This model of economic growth

means China is the largest emit-

ter of carbon dioxide in the world,

accounting for a third of global

emissions in 2021.

Getting China, India and other

countries to rein in their coal use

was a major focus of the heralded

environmental Conference of the

Parties at Glasgow last year. Chi-

na pledged to peak its emissions

before 2030 and stop building

coal power plants abroad but,

with its fears over energy security,

it is using coal more than ever.

Late last year, power shortages

forced local governments to ra-

tion electricity across China as

coal-fired power plants failed to

keep up with soaring demand.

Residential power in some cities

was briefly cut, and factory activi-

ty was staggered to ration power.

The government responded

with an emergency coal produc-

tion plan, and China ended up

with a record output of over 4 bil-

lion tons last years. China already

consumes and produces about

half the coal in the world.

In recent years, a growing body

of research on atmospheric meth-

ane has suggested coal mining

has been underestimated as a

producer of the greenhouse gas

and may be as consequential as

leaks from oil and gas production,

the other main industrial sources.

Tate said an aggressive pro-

gram of capturing and using

methane, where a drainage and

vent system is used to extract and

store the gas from mines, could

reduce the damage of new proj-

ects, but there are few signs this

approach is widely used.

“From the perspective of min-

ing companies, methane is not a

commercial product, it is a waste.

They just want to get it out of the

mine as fast as possible,” he said.

“It is a global blind spot, but in

China, because of the scale of

their industry, the problem is

huge.”

The International Energy

Agency has said that coal meth-

ane must fall by 11 percent each

year until 2030 to achieve net-ze-

ro greenhouse gas emissions by

2050. Part of the difficulty in
      estimating the scale of the prob-
      lem is that mining companies do
      not necessarily track methane
      output regularly or accurately.
      Abandoned mines can also con-
      tinue to release the gas.
      Global Energy Monitor uses a
      project database looking at the
      depth and scale of mines, com-
      bined with a peer-reviewed emis-
      sions estimation methodology, to
      find the probable methane out-
      put. Its first global assessment,
      published in March, found that
      worldwide emissions of coal
      methane were over 52 million
      tons a year, with a climate impact
      similar to that of carbon dioxide
      emissions from all coal plants in
      China. The province of Shanxi
      produces nearly the same amount
      of coal methane as the rest of the
      world combined.
      Beijing declined to sign on to a
      global methane reduction pledge
      last year, but China and the Unit-
      ed States agreed to better monitor
      and control methane emissions

for the rest of the decade. As part

of the deal, China pledged to

develop a national action plan to

reduce methane emissions by

2030.

The two countries were meant

to meet in the first half of 2022 to

discuss measurement and mitiga-

tion of methane. While some Chi-

nese state-owned natural gas gi-

ants have released plans to reduce

emissions, there are few examples

of similar plans in the coal sector,

which is the main source of the

greenhouse gas in China.

Faced with limited data on Chi-

nese methane emissions, with the

last official figures for annual out-

put are from 2014, researchers are

increasingly turning to satellites

to track progress in curbing the

greenhouse gas in the country.

A 2019 study using observation

data from the Japan Aerospace

Exploration Agency found that

from 2010 to 2015, there was no

detectable flattening or decline in

methane release from coal mines

during that period, despite new

regulations meant to reduce

emissions.

“In China in general, there is a

huge emphasis, and rightly so, on

air-quality problems, a lot of

which are due to coal burning

creating pollutants like urban

smog. Whereas gases like meth-

ane, they contribute to climate

change long term, but they don’t

necessarily have that health im-

pact,” said Scot Miller, an assis-

tant professor of environmental

health and engineering at Johns

Hopkins University.

“The things that can be seen

and have a direct impact on pub-

lic health are taking on a higher

priority in China compared to

longer-term climate-related

trends,” he added.

Lyric Li in Seoul and Pei Lin Wu in

Taipei contributed to this report.

China’s renewed coal mining to boost methane, study says

QILAI SHEN/BLOOMBERG NEWS

The increased production and expanded capacity from coal mines is on track to add 10 percent to

global emissions of coal methane, the estimate found. Pictured is a coal site in Jiangsu province.

“It is a global blind spot, but in China, because of

the scale of their industry, the problem is huge.”

Ryan Driskell Tate, an author of the study,

speaking about methane output in China