Mitchell Beer
The Advocate

One day, generations from now, when we write the history of how humanity just managed to avert the calamity of runaway climate change, Canada’s National Farmers Union will be inscribed as one of the heroes.

That is because the NFU is one of the organizations that endorsed the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty is a global campaign led by Canada’s brilliant and irrepressible Tzeporah Berman, an environment activist and writer. It has so far drawn the support of 11 small countries; 95 cities, provinces and states; 2,234 organizations of all kinds; and nearly 625,000 individuals.

At its convention last month in Ottawa, the NFU did everyone a massive favour by endorsing the non-proliferation treaty.

“Farmers know how to pull our weight,” former NFU vice-president Glenn Wright said in a release. “We work hard. We also know how to adapt to drought, floods, blizzards, plough winds and whatever Mother Nature serves up. We dig in and we persevere.”

But “overloading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases is taking us far away from ‘normal,’ ” he added. “Our climate will continue to accelerate away from normal until we stabilize our emissions by addressing our addiction to fossil fuels.”

The purpose of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty is stated in its name. I have been a fan of the treaty campaign, including its tone and tactics, even though I have my doubts that it will achieve its literal goal. How will enough big-power countries sign on and adopt a formal treaty in the very short time we have available to wrestle climate change to the ground? Not when international negotiators at COP28 can’t even entertain an agenda item to decided how, when and whether they might want to talk about agriculture and food. (“COP28” is short for “28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.)

Toward the end of the first week of the 12-day negotiating marathon in Dubai earlier this month, a discussion on decarbonization and adaptation of the global food and agriculture system was deferred to follow-up discussions next June.

As the U.K.’s Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit stated: “Observers were left frustrated with a sense that blocking tactics have, in effect, killed talks on food for another year, at least.”

But at this year’s COP, more than ever before, there were signs that momentum is shifting in favour of the purpose of a non-proliferation treaty — to urgently stop fossil fuel expansion. That would mean phasing down and phasing out oil, gas and coal production and ending the trillions of dollars each year that governments are pouring into subsidies to fabulously profitable fossil fuel companies. Then shifting those dollars to sectors like agriculture that hold the keys to climate progress.

As The Advocate went to press, it wasn’t clear whether fossil fuel phase-out language would make it into the final declaration. But it’s moving up the queue. It’ll be back next year and the next. And it is 100-per-cent clear that the more than 100 countries and countless advocates who support the phase-out will keep at it until the job is done.

I’m absolutely certain that the very notion of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, not to mention the smart, compelling tactics the campaign has used, will be one of the driving influences that eventually make a fossil fuel phase-out a reality. And that every single endorsing organization will have played a central role in making it happen. And that will include Canada’s National Farmers Union.