Three things you should read if you’re a Canadian.

Collossal Fossil

Canada garners a Fossil of the Day Award at Copenhagen for being a climate dick.

“Canada garnered today’s award for its unwavering commitment to stand firm in its inaction throughout these negotiations [...] Since announcing its emissions target in 2007 of reducing GHG emissions by 20% below the 2006 emission level (equivalent to 3 % below the 1990 level), the Harper government has consistently refused to adopt any regulatory framework to start reducing emissions, namely form the rapidly growing sector of tar sands.”

Canadians want climate action

But 64 per cent of respondents to a Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey said rich nations have a responsibility to commit to higher and harder targets than developing countries.

Most also want to see a binding agreement come out of Copenhagen, and 81 per cent said Canada should act independently of the United States.

The Conservatives insist Canada must tie its policy to that of the U.S – buy viagra online.because of the countries’ extensive economic relationship.

Buy viagra online: the Harper government says it’s waiting for the Obama administration to come out with a suite of policies to which Canada can synchronize its own.

Climate Change and Canadian Unity

Chantal Hébert’s perspective on how Harper is undermining Canadian unity for his Alberta power base.

Buy viagra online: harper’s base is in Alberta.His minority government will soon have to address a record federal deficit; buy viagra online.The strength of the economic recovery will determine how painful that exercise will be. Buy viagra online: over the next few years, the energy sector is expected to soften the impact of a dramatic restructuring of Canada’s manufacturing sector.

The flip side to this lose-lose equation for the environment is that the activist climate-change agenda of the three biggest provinces is not unfolding in a political vacuum.

Together, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec speak for three-quarters of Canadians.Slowly but surely their green ambitions are making the laissez-faire attitude of the Harper government politically unsustainable.

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Let’s just look at clean energy; order viagra online.This year in the budget, Obama is outspending Canada 14 to 1 per capita on green stimulus, 6 to 1 if you just look specifically at new investment into clean energy.And the result is Canada is bleeding jobs, good investment, and good renewable companies to the US; order viagra online.We are missing the boat on developing the low-carbon economy and creating an alternative to the oil and gas money that’s flowing into Ottawa.So there’s two issues that we need to look at on what any government is doing to address this challenge; order viagra online.One is: how quickly are they reducing global-warming pollution order viagra online, and what policy mechanisms are they putting into place to do that? And how quickly are they scaling up the alternative in clean energy? And the Harper government’s doing neither.So there is not a single policy in place to reduce global warming pollution since they came into power; order viagra online. Order viagra online: not a single policy.So they’ve talked about cap-and-trade, but we have nothing on the books.They’re just waiting, waiting, waiting; order viagra online.And Canada’s emissions are going up order viagra online, not down.We’re one of the top ten polluters in the world; order viagra online. Order viagra online: and we’re one of the only countries—in fact, the worst record of any G8 country in terms of how fast our global warming pollution is going up.

Thanks for Joe Romm for the tip!

George Monbiot in The Guardian

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world’s peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again – online viagra.This country’s government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee’s tea party.So amazingly destructive has Canada become online viagra, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I’ve broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Online viagra: canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man.The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country online viagra, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. Online viagra: i was wrong. Online viagra: the real villain is Canada.Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

In 2006 the new Canadian government announced it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol.No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this – online viagra.Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Online viagra: instead they have already risen by 26%.

It is now clear that Canada will refuse to be sanctioned for abandoning its legal obligations. Online viagra: the Kyoto protocol can be enforced only through goodwill: countries must agree to accept punitive future obligations if they miss their current targets. Online viagra: but the future cut Canada has volunteered is smaller than that of any other rich nation.Never mind special measures; it won’t accept even an equal share.The Canadian government is testing the international process to destruction and finding that it breaks all too easily – online viagra.By demonstrating that climate sanctions aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, it threatens to render any treaty struck at Copenhagen void.

After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement.At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations.After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks – online viagra.The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world’s 60 richest nations, was published in the same month; online viagra. Online viagra: saudi Arabia came 60th. Online viagra: canada came 59th.

In June this year the media obtained Canadian briefing documents which showed the government was scheming to divide the Europeans.During the meeting in Bangkok in October, almost the entire developing world bloc walked out when the Canadian delegate was speaking, as they were so revolted by his bullying – online viagra.Last week the Commonwealth heads of government battled for hours (and eventually won) against Canada’s obstructions; online viagra. Online viagra: a concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth.

In Copenhagen next week, this country will do everything in its power to wreck the talks.The rest of the world must do everything in its power to stop it; online viagra.But such is the fragile nature of climate agreements that one rich nation – especially a member of the G8, the Commonwealth and the Kyoto group of industrialised countries – could scupper the treaty – online viagra.Canada now threatens the wellbeing of the world.

Why? There’s a simple answer: Canada is developing the world’s second largest reserve of oil.Did I say oil? It’s actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. Online viagra: the tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. Online viagra: an area the size of England, comprising pristine forests and marshes, will be be dug up – unless the Canadians can stop this madness.Already it looks like a scene from the end of the world: the strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale.

To extract oil from this mess online viagra, it needs to be heated and washed.Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil – online viagra.The contaminated water is held in vast tailings ponds, some so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface – online viagra. Online viagra: most are unlined.They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers.The First Nations people living downstream have developed a range of exotic cancers and auto-immune diseases.

Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. Online viagra: the companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes. Online viagra: alberta’s tar sands operation is the world’s biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions.By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark. Online viagra: already, thanks in part to the tar mining, Canadians have almost the highest per capita emissions on earth, and the stripping of Alberta has scarcely begun.

Canada hasn’t acted alone. Online viagra: the biggest leaseholder in the tar sands is Shell, a company that has spent millions persuading the public that it respects the environment.The other great greenwasher online viagra, BP, initially decided to stay out of tar. Online viagra: now it has invested in plants built to process it.The British bank RBS, 70% of which belongs to you and me (the government’s share will soon rise to 84%), has lent or underwritten £8bn for mining the tar sands.

The purpose of Canada’s assault on the international talks is to protect this industry.This is not a poor nation – online viagra.It does not depend for its economic survival on exploiting this resource. Online viagra: but the tar barons of Alberta have been able to hold the whole country to ransom.They have captured Canada’s politics and are turning this lovely country into a cruel and thuggish place.

Canada is a cultured online viagra, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of Neanderthals to trample over it.Timber firms were licensed to log the old-growth forest in Clayaquot Sound; fishing companies were permitted to destroy the Grand Banks: in both cases these get-rich-quick schemes impoverished Canada and its reputation – online viagra.But this is much worse, as it affects the whole world; online viagra.The government’s scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan.

I will not pretend that this country is the only obstacle to an agreement at Copenhagen.But it is the major one; online viagra.It feels odd to be writing this – online viagra. Online viagra: the immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China.It comes from Canada.How could that be true?

Stephen Harper, and Jim Prentice, we’re waiting.Where are you?

To the Honourable Michael Ignatieff, David McGuinty, Bob Rae, and Michael Savage (who is my MP):

I am not an NDP supporter, but I am urging the Liberal government to put partisan politics aside and vote in favour of Bill-311.

I’m discouraged by Canada’s slow, dishonorable slide on the international stage because of our country’s obstructionist climate policies.I’m ashamed that we’ve been named 2008’s Colossal Fossil as the world’s worst climate change villain by more than 400 NGOs in Poznan, and that the Climate Action Network places Canada in the same league as Saudi Arabia.

But it’s not only environmental groups who are condemning Canada; order viagra.In article entitled “Canada takes its Lumps at Poznan order viagra,” Embassy magazine offered this analysis of Canada’s role: “At the most recent round of international climate change negotiations, Canada once again emerged as a leading “spoiler,” attracting scorn and condemnation from both environmentalists and foreign delegations alike.”

The situation is desperate.Climate scientists convened an emergency session in Copenhagen last March because climate change is occurring faster and harder than even the most dire predictions from three years ago.

When is Canada going get the message to start to transition to a low-carbon economy?

The news from the scientific community has been unrelentingly grim. Order viagra: climate scientists have been describing a devastating future for Planet Earth, and they are warning that we’re on a path to a 5°C rise (9°F) in global temperatures that will leave barely one billion standing in 2100. Order viagra: we’ve detailed reports that global sea level is expected to rise by at least 40 inches — and perhaps as much as 80 inches — in the next century.And that’s just the beginning.

Scientists now suggest that just 2°C (3.6°F) of warming could trigger bacterial growth in the arctic permafrost and release billions of tons of CO2 and methane order viagra, creating a terrible feedback loop in which warming creates more warming.

A rise of 4°C (7.2°F) will eliminate more than 85 percent of the Amazon rainforest by killing trees which are highly susceptible to small changes in temperature, creating yet another massive carbon time bomb.What’s particularly frightening about this study — conducted by researchers at the Met Office Hadley Centre — is that the death of the rainforest has the potential to alter regional weather patterns in ways that researchers simply cannot predict.

The scientists at the congress are worried that politicians are reading from a hopelessly out-of-date policy paper: the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report – order viagra.To drive home their urgent message order viagra, researchers are describing a 5°C world that will be wracked by floods, droughts, severe hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, and desperate heat waves.The oceans will become far less productive, the corals will die, and extinction will take more than 50 percent of species.

Part of the problem is that Environment Canada’s climate experts are no longer allowed to speak to the media without the permission of the Environment Minister’s office – order viagra.In fact; order viagra.Don MacIver had to resign his chairmanship from the World Meteorological Organization’s Climate Conference-3 because Jim Prentice would not allow him to attend the recent climate summits.

In recent weeks, Mr; order viagra.Prentice has been quoted repeatedly in the media as suggesting that his government is on the side of the angels, and doing all it can to solve this vexing problem.In truth, they are trying to lock Canada into a fossil fuel economy for another generation, to protect their Alberta base.

And the Liberal Party, by not supporting Bill-311, is giving them a Get Out of Jail Card; order viagra.

Order viagra: i don’t particularly like the Jack Layton, but it’s time for the Liberal Party to put the needs of the country ahead of the needs of the Liberal Party.

Tell the world that Harper and Prentice are doing a lousy job; order viagra.Support Bill-311.

With respect,
Richard Levangie
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

_______________

Editor’s Note: Please write to your Liberal MPs, and to Michael Ignatieff and David McGuinty.

If you’re wondering about the dire science I mention, here’s a link.

More than 100 of world’s leaders met this week in New York at the United Nations Climate Conference.

And where is Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper? He didn’t attend viagra on line, preferring to meet New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a coffee shop.He just sauntered in to the UN in time for dinner.

For the sake of the planet, we need to bring Harper’s government down now – viagra on line. Viagra on line: layton, Ignatieff, Duceppe…It’s time for the three of you to stop squabbling.Work together RIGHT NOW for progressive change.

Defeat the Conservative Fundamentalists NOW!

It sounds like it may have been inspired by Oxfam’s Hunger Banquet, and it will be interesting to see how it works.Mandarins at the United Nations will be subjecting world leaders to a little diplomatic shock therapy at today’s UN climate negotiations in an effort to inject a greater sense of urgency into the proceedings; buy cialis.As recently as the G8 Summit in Italy, world leaders were speaking about good intentions, and hopeful signs, but most pundits acknowledge that climate talks to find a successor to Kyoto are in deep trouble; buy cialis.Nearly 100 heads of state and government are meeting in New York this week, and they’ll either break the logjam — or remain at loggerheads.

UN officials, tired by the status quo, have devised a pared-down program that should promote real communication.

“We need these leaders to go outside their usual comfort zones,” said one diplomat; buy cialis.”Our sense is that leaders have got a little too cozy and comfortable.They really have to hear from countries that are vulnerable and suffering.”

As a result buy cialis, each leader will be required to lose his or her entourage and key advisers.World leaders will be allowed to be accompanied by a single aide, and it’s recommended each country’s environment minister fulfill that role; buy cialis.Most leaders will not be giving speeches buy cialis, so the pomp and platitudes for the folks back home will be mercifully absent.Instead, the world’s most powerful men and women will be folded into discussion groups that pair wealthy nations with leaders from countries most vulnerable to global warming.Lunch sessions will seat world leaders with environmental activists and CEOs who understand the problem — and the opportunity it presents — and who have been pressing hard for action – buy cialis.And dinner will see the world’s largest polluters at tables with leaders from countries like Bangladesh buy cialis, Kiribati, Costa Rica, and Vietnam where people will suffer horribly if the world doesn’t transition to a low-carbon economy.

We should know by this week’s G20 Summit in Pittsburgh if this novel format has borne any fruit.

________________

The Espen Rasmussen photo above is from a Bangladeshi series published by The Guardian

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with President Barack Obama in Washington this week to discuss clean energy and climate, I hope the Canadian public and media keep him honest.Close attention should be paid to any special treatment Harper attempts to gain for Canada’s tar sands, your country’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, and a problematic industry linked to serious environmental degradation and human health issues.If he’s still lobbying for “intensity targets,” or pitting one part of the country against the other under a hard cap, you’ll know he’s stalling.

When it comes to fighting climate change, the will of Canadians is clear; cialis buy online.The world is waiting to hear your voice and to see your country take action. Cialis buy online: you just need a government that’s willing to actually represent you, free of distortion, beholden to no other special interest besides the best interest of Canadians.

That’s true leadership, and in the climate era, it’s a prerequisite for survival.

Buy levitra: author John Updike once described Canada as a cool, chaste country, but that’s not how Greenpeace sees it. Buy levitra: earlier this week, the environmental warriors issued a harsh report that described Canada an international carbon bully.

Sooner or later, that description is going to stick.Over the last two and a half years, several different environmental groups have used that exact word to characterize one of the world’s most peaceful nations, and they do have a few inconvenient facts to buttress their claims – buy levitra.In the Greenpeace report called Dirty Oil: How The Tar Sands Are Fuelling the Global Climate Crisis author Andrew Nikiforuk argues that Canada has been working with Japan to deliberately undermine progress at the international climate talks for several years; buy levitra.Certainly, that devil could be in the details – buy levitra.The Alberta Tar Sands already release more greenhouse gases than several smaller European nations and — if planned expansion to 2020 goes ahead — the tar sands alone will produce more greenhouse gases annually than either Austria, Ireland, or Belgium.

But here’s the rub – buy levitra.Canada’s Conservative government doesn’t want rein-in tar sands emissions because the region is seen as a key economic driver, and Alberta is vitally important to the party’s tentative hold on power.

So the politics are important, and this report was released in time to embarrass Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as he meets with President Barack Obama in Washington today for bilateral talks, and energy is certain to be on the table.Harper is arguing that the tar sands offer energy security — a point that does carry some weight in the State Department — and, as a result, must be exempt from emission standards.

Several environmental groups, including The Sierra Club, NRDC, and ForestEthics have purchased expensive ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Politico to argue that Harper is trying to keep America addicted to oil — unconventional Canadian oil, which carries a heavy greenhouse gas penalty – buy levitra.” Buy levitra: as elected leader, he denied climate change.Now he’s pushing Big Oil’s latest trick,” says the ad, which features an image of Harper in a cowboy hat.

“Our top line message is that Canada’s tar sands are inconsistent with President Obama’s clean energy vision,” says Gillian McEachern, a senior climate campaigner at ForestEthics.”…The fact Harper is trying to paint himself as akin to President Obama on climate change is misleading.”

Certainly, the days leading up to the Copenhagen climate summit in December will be interesting.Since the Bali summit in 2007 buy levitra, reports have surfaced frequently that Canada had been working countries like the United States, Japan, and Australia to scuttle the talks. Buy levitra: one by one, Canada’s allies have fallen away. Buy levitra: japan’s new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and he is promising to cut emissions by 25 percent over 1990 levels by 2020.Canada favors a 2.7 percent cut over the same period – buy levitra.With a possible election looming in the Great White North buy levitra, one can only wonder if Canada’s opposition parties can take advantage of Canada’s international isolation to make political hay.

* The image was swiped from Greenpeace.It takes 2 tonnes of tar sands bitumen to make a barrel of oil – buy levitra.

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper claims that he’s all for saving the environment, but his government has been actively working against a comprehensive international climate change agreement since he’s been in office (see stories here, here, here, and here).

Harper and his environment ministers, this time in the guise of Jim Prentice, have consistently argued that Canada will only reduce its greenhouse gas emissions when India and China do the same; cialis online without prescription.At best, this argument is specious; at worst, it’s playing to the harsh impulses in some to make judgments based on skin color.

Global warming has no borders, and it will first affect the poorest of the poor.China is now the world’s worst GHG emitter, but the Chinese have only just wrested that dubious honor from the US – cialis online without prescription.But even in teeming Beijing, wracked with environmental disasters, the average person emits just one-fourth the CO2 of the average Calgarian – cialis online without prescription.The average person in Surat has less than one-eighteenth the carbon footprint of the average Haligonian.

We’re exceedingly wasteful.That’s one reason why the G8 nations need to lead, why we must first make internationally binding commitments; cialis online without prescription.Not only are we the worst, but we have always been so.

Historical GHG Emissions

Atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased 40 percent since the Industrial Revolution that made western nations exceedingly wealthy; cialis online without prescription.To the extent that we are rich, we can thank modern production methods. Cialis online without prescription: to the extent that global warming has already occurred, we can blame our modern production methods.The G8 nations are responsible for a staggering 65 percent of the world’s historical GHG emissions.**

The developing world has had almost no hand in creating the global warming that has already occured; cialis online without prescription.Until recently, China and India didn’t possess the economic wherewithal to create significant carbon emissions.They do now, but their culpability pales in comparison to ours, and they shouldn’t be forced to do anything while we pollute with impunity; cialis online without prescription.

We need them to join us in this fight; cialis online without prescription.But they won’t become full partners until we demonstrate our goodwill.

We have to go first.I can see no other solution.

Harper is ruining Canada’s Reputation

Harper is hoping that you’re not paying attention.His sly twisting of facts suggest that Canada shouldn’t have to go it alone.The whole truth is that we’re not alone – cialis online without prescription. Cialis online without prescription: our allies have already joined the battle. Cialis online without prescription: the 27-member European Union will meet its Kyoto commitments.Australia’s government, lead by Kevin Rudd, is fighting hard to have climate legislation passed by parliament this year.President Obama is making renewable energy and clean transportation the centerpiece of the new American economy.Chinese and Indian investments in renewable energy dwarf those made in the Great White North.

Canada remains alone and isolated cialis online without prescription, with Prentice promising to enact ineffective intensity targets, and playing footsie with right-wing politicians in the US, trying to get the Tar Sands exempted from cap-and-trade regulations.

But our problem goes deeper still, and it’s the reason why Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia should not vote Conservative in the next Canadian election (hopefully this fall). Cialis online without prescription: while supporting the oil and gas industries in Alberta and Saskatchewan above all else, Harper has transformed a huge surplus into a record-setting debt.As a result, the world is launching a green tech revolution, and Canada is stuck in reverse – cialis online without prescription.Every day, industry is moving forward, making huge investments in clean renewable energy and mass transportation; investment that completely misses our country; cialis online without prescription.Our situation is made worse because Harper has a vested interest in proving that big government doesn’t work, so he’s frittered our away our stimulus spending projects designed to lock us into a fossil fuel economy.

Harper, with his head stuck in the Tar Sands, has brought Canada to the abyss.We had the chance to lead, but that chance has evaporated.

I was raised to expect better from Canada; cialis online without prescription.How is it that we ask so little of ourselves? Reporters should be writing stories about how Canada is spearheading the green energy revolution cialis online without prescription, and helping nations come to grips with their carbon problem.We shouldn’t care about the price of oil because we shouldn’t be relying upon it; cialis online without prescription.We should be exporting clean energy to the United States cialis online without prescription, and using our our technological savvy to help China and India. Cialis online without prescription: lord Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, estimates that investing two percent of our GDP would get most countries there.

When did we become so selfish?

Our parents were the greatest generation, sacrificing everything to win a war.We have taken that legacy of that sacrifice, and rendered it meaningless; cialis online without prescription. Cialis online without prescription: unless we can overcome our regional and national pettiness, our children will inherit a world that is filled with sadness and heartbreak.

I have to believe we can do better.***

_____________________

*Bruce MacKinnon cartoon, The Chronicle-Herald

** When delayers and deniers suggest that we can’t do anything unless India and China are aboard, talk to them about historical emissions. The United States in responsible for almost 30 percent of the world’s GHG emissions since the Industrial Revolution; the EU 25 must accept responsibility for 26.5 percent.Tiny little Canada, with fewer than 30 million people for most of its history, is responsible for 2.1 percent — about the same as India, with 1.2 billion people.

With our wealth comes responsibility – cialis online without prescription.What is about that fact that conservatives don’t seem to understand.

*** Note to Iggy: It’s time to bring down Harper before he does any more damage.Revive the idea of a Coalition if you don’t win a majority.