Nova Scotia is home to the Sydney Tar Ponds, 31 hectares surrounding the old Sysco steel plant that have been poisoned with 700,000 metric tons of toxic waste. Sysco went bankrupt years ago, leaving this mess for government to wipe clean with taxpayer money — more than $400 million if the project comes in on budget. Meanwhile, the good people of Sydney suffer from high levels of cancer, heart disease, and other assorted illnesses. Sometimes toxic orange sludge oozes through their basement walls.

If Sydney’s problem is a national embarrassment, then how should we describe the Alberta Tar Sands, where the vast tailing ponds already cover more than 5,000 hectares? It will be bigger tomorrow, and bigger again next week. Five thousand hectares. The Sydney Tar ponds 160 times over. It boggles the mind. (Take a photo tour).

Don’t let the Alberta government bamboozle you with disarming facts and figures. There is no credible, workable plan to clean up this toxic moonscape. But Alberta’s unnatural disaster isn’t only about the tailings ponds, it’s about air, and water, and destroying lives — in First Nations’ communities and halfway around the globe in the world’s poorest nations.

The tar sands release about 100 tonnes of benzene every year — one of the most potent human carcinogens — and 63,000 tonnes of harmful volatile organic compounds. And it will worsen with each passing year. Depending on economic circumstances, tar sands development is expected to double or triple over the next decade, emitting a chemical legacy that will poison Canada for generations. (See Environmental Defence downloadable PDF).

But One Blue Marble is a site that fights climate change, so here our story will grow even uglier. As Environmental Defence says, in the campaign to slow climate change, the Alberta Tar Sands are Ground Zero. Carbon dioxide emissions from the Tar Sands alone are already greater than 145 of the world’s nations. Burning a gallon of Alberta oil releases almost three times the greenhouse gas emissions as burning a gallon of light, sweet Saudi Arabian crude.

In 2007, tar sands greenhouse gas emissions topped 40 million metric tonnes. When oil prices rise again — and let’s face it, they will — oil companies working the region will increase production to emit up to 142 million tonnes of CO2 annually by 2020. By the Alberta government’s own estimates, the tar sands will account for 400 million tonnes of GHG emissions in 2050. (See Environmental Defence).

The Conservative Party won the last Canadian election because most Albertans support a unrealistic laissez-faire approach to slow climate change, and the federal Tories won every Albertan seat. Stephen Harper’s government will not impose meaningful emissions caps on tar sands oil because Alberta is their bread and butter, the region that brought them to power after more than a decade in the wilderness. But having a government — and an environment minister — that are apologists for tar sands degradation has placed Canada at odds with the rest of the world. Their obeisance to tar sands imperatives makes it impossible for this government to put firm caps on emissions from other industries, like our coal-fired power plants.

To create the impression that Harper and his cronies are working doggedly to stave off climate change, the Conservatives ripped a page from George W. Bush’s playbook, that’s just as successful here in the Great White North. The government has embraced so-called intensity targets to cut emissions, asking industry to produce less pollution per unit of production. So over the course of the next dozen years, Alberta’s oil companies need only take a baby step towards efficiency, and the Conservatives will pat themselves on the backs for a job well done. But here’s the math: If oil companies cut their tar sands emissions by 15 percent per barrel produced, then double production, total emissions still increase by 85 percent.

It’s easy for industry to limbo under an emissions stick that’s already over their heads. But fundamental dishonesty hides behind any intensity target, because as long as the fossil fuel industry makes a few nips and tucks, they’ll exceed government standards while destroying our reputation and the planet. In fact, intensity targets actually encourage fossil fuel industries to increase production and send their emissions through the roof. That’s the Conservative plan.

But this isn’t just my opinion. To name just a few, the CD Howe Institute (PDF), Deutsche Bank, the Pembina Institute, the analysts at Point Carbon and Carbon Finance, and the Conservative government’s own environmental commissioner have admonished Harper’s business-as-usual plan. After the last international climate change summit in Poznan, Canada was named the Colossal Fossil, the world’s worst climate villain, by more than 450 NGOs. Negotiators and newspaper editorialists around the globe singled out Canada for scorn and ridicule.

There is but one way forward. Even if the rest of Canada goes crazy embracing energy efficiency goals and transitioning to a low-carbon economy, Canada will fail to meet even the impotent emission goals outlined in Turning the Corner because of the Alberta Tar Sands.

Canada needs courageous leaders who will impose hard caps, we need tar sands polluters to pay heavy taxes for emitting CO2, and we need a plan in motion to shut down and clean up the whole disaster. A gradual approach would have been preferable, but years of dithering by the Conservatives — and Liberals before them — have created an urgency that cannot be ignored.

Fossil fuel industries must pay heavily for their carbon pollution as that will force them to transition to low-carbon technology. The money that is raised through either a stiff cap-and-trade policy or a carbon tax can be used by government to help industry deploy carbon capture and sequestration technology — if it can be proven to be effective. If not, we need to prevent further Tar Sands development until we can access the oil without destroying the planet.

We don’t hate Albertans, but we do hate what Alberta is doing to the environment and to Canada’s international reputation.

Until Albertans come to grips with this tragic legacy and take steps back from the abyss, Alberta is Mordor.

_______________

More about President Obama’s visit at West Coast Climate Equity.

Three publicity campaigns are working to convince President Obama to turn his back on tar sands oil at Obama2Canada, Forest Ethics, and Avaaz. Please support them!

You can also buy the bumper stickers on this page to help spread the word! Designed by NY art director Tara Keleher for One Blue Marble.

An interview with the Wall Street Journal revealed that new US Department of Energy chief Dr. Steven Chu plans to dispense billions in loans to jump-start the US’s low-carbon future. Chu plans to spend half of his department’s federal stimulus money — which will total between $35 and $40 billion — in 2009. In order to get money out the door and into clean technologies quickly, Chu will speed up the EPA’s sluggish and paperwork-heavy vetting process.

Mr. Chu said that agency’s legal department has been “very conservative,” requiring reams of documentation, and that the agency’s lawyers too often wait until all applications are submitted to begin vetting them, rather than “triaging” them on a “rolling” basis.

“I now have my advisers actually going down, rolling up their sleeves and saying ‘OK, let’s look at every detail … What is it that you’re requiring? Is this necessary?’” he says. To speed the approval process further, the EPA may borrow financial staff from other federal agencies to demonstrate their processes to EPA veterans. Chu says the temporary staff can “come over here and put them next to our people and say ‘this is the pace we expect, not three years, but five months.’ We’ve got to do this and we’ve got to do it in a way that has not been done at the Department of Energy.”

The Right Honorable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada

The government’s Environment Commisioner issued a scathing report that suggested that the Conservatives lily-livered attempts to reign in Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions are weak and futile.

From The Globe & Mail:

“Environment Canada has made a claim of expected results even though it is very unlikely that it will be able to claim real, measurable and verifiable results,” Mr. Vaughan writes in his report.

The Environment Commissioner’s audit report, released simultaneously Thursday with an Auditor-General’s report, found no evidence to support the emission-reduction claims associated with the government’s $1.5-billion clean-air and climate-change trust fund and the $365-million public-transit tax credit.

Auditors found the original estimates of success for these programs were flawed. For instance, the government claims its $1.5-billion trust-fund transfer to the provinces will eliminate 80 megatonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The department conducted almost no analysis to support that figure, and did not perform key types of analysis,” the commissioner’s report says.

Environmentalists have long suggested that this government’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions — called Turning the Corner — is nothing more than a cheap con game designed to fool Canadians. It uses the same vacuous rhetoric that former President George Bush once used to delay and obfuscate.

The simple fact is this: the Conservative environmental program relies on intensity targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — and intensity targets haven’t worked since the days of the steam engine.

The Canadian government is the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. The European Union is proposing that its member states cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020.

Canada is pledging to cut our emissions by 20 percent over 2006 levels (our emissions in 2006 had ballooned by 28 percent when compared to 1990). So in other words, we’re really not planning to planning to cut our emissions at all, and the government actually expects us to emit 3 percent more in 2020 than we did in 1990! (As a Pembina report explains).

We’re already off course. If the recession ends, the Alberta Tar Sands will expand, and Canada will become the world’s worst per capita polluter.

Don’t be fooled, Canada!

The last time the Conservatives actually appointed a strong minister for the environment, his name was Lucien Bouchard, and that didn’t work out too well for the party. But Bouchard was a good man.

I cannot say the same about Conservative Environment Minister Jim Prentice. Canada has become an international embarrassment, and Prentice is just another fossil fool.

We need to reach Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party of Canada. We think he’s biding his time, and preparing to bring down the Conservatives later this year. That’s all well and good. But even if the Conservatives are defeated in a general election, and the Liberals gain a majority, we still believe that our country would best be served by a coalition that represents Canadian interests from sea to shining sea.

The problems that come with transitioning to a low-carbon economy are vast and complicated. We need as many parliamentarians as we can find all pulling in the same direction. We need a new spirit of cooperation and common purpose if Canada is to once again become a great nation that is respected throughout the world.

Ignatieff has put the Tories on notice. Well, it’s time for us to put Ignatieff — and the Liberals — on notice!

The Red Letter Campaign:

Ignatieff is busy. He’s trying to save the party, cozy up to Alberta, support the Conservative budget without seeming like a toady, fill depleted Liberal coffers, and hone his political skills. He’s WAY too busy to read our mail.

But we’re willing to bet that some members of the Liberal caucus do read their mail, and we bet they talk to their colleagues. So we we’ll write to them. Every week or two in our Red Letter Campaign, we’ll have a Red Letter Day: we’ll decide on a theme, and write letters to our Liberal MPs, or to a members of the Liberal shadow cabinet. We want to voice our objections to Ignatieff’s unqualified support for the fossil fuel industry when renewable energy makes more sense for the economy and future generations, ask him to fight so that Environment Canada scientists are free to talk to the media about climate change, and bring down this government with all due haste.

We’ll post our letters here at our One Blue Marble blog, and on the main RLC page as text files, so you can download them easily, and personalize them before mailing. We want to keep up the pressure on Ignatieff, and help the Liberals understand that we speak for the MAJORITY of Canadians.

But that’s not all we can do. We can also:

1. Talk to friends and family about climate change, and tell them why we need to support a change in government so that Canada stops stifling progress at the international climate talks.
2. Talk to friends and family about why the current Conservative budget will place Canada at an economic disadvantage for a generation — or more!
3. Write Letters to the Editor to Canadian newspapers. We’ll start compiling a list of newspapers, and writing our own letters and posting them here.
4. Send us your Letters to the Editor. We’ll post the best ones here as often we can, with full attribution (if that’s what you’d like).
5. Keep us informed. We have two other jobs, so even though we follow global warming in the Canadian media, stories still get past us. Tell us what people in your community are saying!
6. Ask us for advice. We have answers for anyone who tries to hit you over the head with junk science.
7. Add our link to your blog to boost our hits. If you write about climate change, we’ll do the same.
8. Buy a One Blue Marble Bumper Sticker to show your public support for the Coalition. Buy a groovy t-shirt or hoody to help us keep fighting!

We have four more campaigns that we’re getting ready to launch in the coming weeks and months, so please stay tuned.

1. We want to slow development at the Alberta Oil Sands, the world’s most environmentally destructive project.
2. We want to mothball all coal-fired power generation in Canada and the US over the next four years, or convince utilities to switch to biomass. This will cut more greenhouse gas emissions than anything else we can do as a society.
3. We want to engage religious groups across Canada to get them to join the campaign to slow climate change, as they’ve done in Scotland. And guess what… Scotland recently tabled incredibly ambitious climate change legislation that won the praise of environmentalists.
4. We want to take the muzzles off Environment Canada scientists so that Canadians can learn the truth about global warming

If you have any great ideas, please get in touch!

As a progressive voter, it won’t surprise anyone to learn that I’m disappointed that Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has once again taken the upper hand in Canadian political discourse, outmaneuvering Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in the process. Not only did Harper manage to avoid a Vote of Non-Confidence that would have brought down his minority government, but he will also manage to pass a truly execrable budget that is nothing more than a crude grab for votes.

And Ignatieff is letting him do it without making a single substantive change. His words, suggesting that he’s putting the government on notice, ring hollow and false.

The 2009 Canadian Budget should please no one, Conservatives included. Two months ago, Harper and his hapless Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had pronounced that Canada was in fine fiscal shape, arguing that the government just needed to hold steady, and all would be fine. Now they talk about a painful economic crisis affecting every sector of the economy, so they’re going to spend, and spend big: they’ll add more than $85 billion to our national debt over the next three years. Half of that will come from badly-timed tax breaks. To say that they’ve mismanaged our economy is to engage in the Canadian penchant for understatement.

Don’t get me wrong. I wanted a profound stimulus package. Just not this one. It’s not the $85 billion that upsets me, it’s that our money is being thrown out the window, and at the end of the day, Canada will be exactly where it is today — only another $100 billion in the red.

This was the time to invest in a clean technologies and renewable energy, so that when the price of oil runs to $150 a barrel in two or three years, Canadians would need less of it. This was our our opportunity to support technologies that would eventually bring deep cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions, because it’s time to pay the piper. The world is moving to a low-carbon economy, and Canada will be left behind. (Greenpeace has an insightful summary).

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Harper is a 19th century man living in a 21st century world. He doesn’t know how to navigate the complexities of modern life, and simply can’t abide dissenting opinions. Harper’s only hope is that now that oil supplies have peaked, the world’s nations will beat a path to the Alberta Tar Sands.

What shocks me is that Dr. Ignatieff — a scholar from Harvard and Oxford — holds the same misguided views. Talking earlier this month before a town hall meeting, Ignatieff claimed that the oil sands will change everything for Canada’s future.

“It is awe-inspiring,” he said, adding that the controversial project boasts enough oil to last the rest of this century. “We’ve got oil reserves there that are just staggering in size. It changes everything about our economic future. It changes everything about Canada’s importance in the world.”

Unfortunately, Harper and Ignatieff are looking in the wrong direction for salvation. The future of Canada lies in clean technology and renewable energy. For one thing, President Obama is moving boldly on energy efficiency and renewables, and has signaled that he doesn’t to use dirty energy in America’s future. And just this week, the European Union released a blueprint to Copenhagen — the next international climate summit — that calls for developed nations to cut their CO2 emissions by 30 percent by 2020.

So the only way our trading partners will use Tar Sands oil is if — by some miracle — we can clean up the world’s worst environmental disaster. And the simple fact is that we can’t for the foreseeable future. The one technology that holds just a smidgen of promise — and it’s still a long-shot — is called carbon capture and sequestration. And it’s at least 25 years away from widespread implementation. (The IPCC says 40 years).

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions are expected to rise dramatically over the next decade, if Alberta escalates tar sands development . The only way for Canada to continue walking this suicidal path would be for the world’s nations to agree that Canada is a special case, that our unique status allows us to pollute with impunity with nary a care for the damage we’d cause in developing nations.

The thought that Harper — and possibly Ignatieff — will try to sell this position to world leaders makes me ill. The difference between the two men is that I hope the Liberal leader will listen to reason.

We cannot afford the Harper budget. It spends money on roads and bridges, it spends money at hockey rinks and community centers, it spends money training unemployed workers for jobs that won’t be there. It has a few good points — more money for social housing, to give one example — but it is utterly lacking in vision.

We need vision. The money should be flowing to support public transit, and expanded rail services. It should create a clean car manufacturing base, and bring energy efficiency to homes and buildings across the country. And it should jump start renewable energy projects across the Great White North, but in Atlantic Canada in particular. That Harper has only invested lunch money in clean technology projects proves that he’s trying to lock us into an economy based on dirty energy for a generation.

For now, Ignatieff is in Harper’s coat pocket. I can only take solace in the fact that we might change the his mind before May’s Liberal leadership convention.

The real strength of Canada lies not in dirty oil, but in the untapped wind, wave, and hydro power potential of Canada’s east coast. Just this week, the UK released a report detailing how offshore wind turbines placed around Great Britain coastal waters could bring 25 gigawatts of power ashore by 2020, enough to power every single home in the Old Country. And know that eastern Canada’s potential is even greater, and that our winds and waves are relentless. The potential for development in Newfoundland, Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI is awe-inspiring. And if we build all those turbines in Ontario and Quebec, we’ll create thousands of manufacturing jobs. Then the world truly will beat a path to our door.*

It won’t happen with this government. The bulk of Harper’s $2.2 billion in clean tech investments are going to nuclear power ($351 million), and carbon capture ($500 million) for Alberta.

The government of Canada claims that this budget will create the jobs of tomorrow, but that assertion is a bold-faced lie. Harper is supporting the fossil fuel industry to the exclusion of all else. And the saddest truth of all is that for every job created by investing in old, resourced-based industries, you can create four clean-tech jobs.

We deserve a government that understands modern challenges. Harper is too far gone. Ignatieff is leaning that way. But I hope you’ll join me in trying to change his mind.

It’s time to write your Liberal MPs. Let them know that this is your winter of discontent.

___________

* I’ll write more about eastern Canada’s wind and wave potential going forward

With one bold stroke, President Barack Obama has changed the game. If Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff are not paying attention, Canada’s economy will soon be in tatters.

How do I know? Easy. Just this week, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said that his government will work closely with an Obama administration, adding that Obama’s environmental principles are “virtually identical” to those of the Conservatives.

Well, we’ll see on Tuesday. But unless the Conservative budget is groundbreaking and farsighted — two qualities for which this government isn’t known — and layered with programs that will hasten a Green Revolution in Canada,** then we are lost. We’ll become poor relations, unable to compete on the same world stage as the Americans.

Now, everyone knows the first part. The U.S. Congress has unveiled a $825 billion stimulus program that will invest heavily in infrastructure and job creation. More than $54 billion of that funding includes money to hasten an American transition to a low-carbon economy. Obama has pledged $11 billion to modernize the electrical grid, $8 billion to boost renewable energy, and more than $18 billion for energy-efficiency retrofits and home weatherization packages.

If you’re an environmentalist, those numbers made you happy, but you probably weren’t dancing in the streets.

And then Obama’s team dropped a bomb, the quiet provision that changes everything. The back story is important. About a month ago, Obama’s man — California Rep. Henry Waxman— waged a divisive battle with Michigan Rep. John Dingell for control of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. The contrasts between the two men are remarkable. Dingell is a champion of big business, the Big Three, and laissez-faire politics, while Waxman has fought hard for cleaner air and water, and corporate responsibility.

Waxman unexpectedly prevailed, ousting the man who had held the chairmanship for a generation. And this week, the California Democrat added a provision to the $825 billion package: any state that accesses these federal funds are required to “decouple” utility profits from sales. That means utilities have the potential to make more money by reducing their customers’ electricity demands than they would by promoting consumption.

As a result, California-style energy programs will sweep across the United States, and electrical utilities will be investing hundreds of billions to bring energy efficiency to their customers. Coal might be a cheap, but energy efficiency is cheaper still. In California, demand for electricity has remained steady for three decades. In the rest of the US, it has grown by 60 percent.

A wave of clean tech investment will transform how Americans use energy. Millions of homes from Maine to New Mexico will be insulated, and smart meters will be installed everywhere.

Smart meters are revolutionary devices that control home energy use; they actually communicate with utilities and enable customers to use energy when rates are lowest, so they can run energy-hungry appliances like dishwashers, and clothes dryers when demand on the grid is low and rates are cheap. Smart meters can reduce power bills substantially, and American utilities will now pay to install them because they, too, can make money. Plans for new power plants will be mothballed, leaving even more money for the energy-efficiency war chest.

But that’s just the beginning. Utilities will also throw their considerable weight behind electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) that can run for 50 miles or more solely on electricity. These vehicles are already in the last stages of testing and will be on the market by 2010. America’s clean transportation industry will become a juggernaut.

Battery-powered cars will be crucial to American utilities because they can work as mobile energy storage centers that regulate supply. Millions of these cars and trucks will eventually work in tandem with power companies, providing energy to the grid when demand is high, and recharging overnight when power generators have excess capacity, but nowhere to put it.*** Since electricity supply from renewable sources fluctuates by its very nature, PHEVs and EVs will make it easier to plug those power sources into the grid, ushering in a era of clean energy. Most Americans will jump at the chance to cut their annual gas bill by 75 percent. Money that once went to OPEC — and Canada — will now stay in the U.S.

The noise you hear is Alberta’s Tar Sands dreams deflating. With this one provision, Obama has signaled that he doesn’t want dirty energy to power America’s future.

I don’t expect Harper to understand. He’s a 19th-century politician in a 21st-century world. His political fortunes are tied to Alberta, and he will fight tooth and nail to lock us into a fossil-fuel economy.

If Tuesday’s Conservative budget doesn’t decouple utility sales, doesn’t include billions for energy efficiency, doesn’t support wind and wave energy development in Atlantic Canada and BC, doesn’t provide incentives to transform Ontario’s transportation industry… then we’re lost. Our children will pay for our shortsightedness.

This budget must be visionary. If not, the Coalition must bring down the Conservatives. There is not a moment to lose.

____________

*The Harper poster was created by Darrin White, an artist, art administrator and social activist. The poster is available for download at his site.

** Four former Canadian Prime Ministers and a number of environmental groups are calling for a green investment that will help our country keep pace with the US.

The Electric Vehicle connection to the utilities is called V2G for Vehicle-to-Grid. It’s set to revolutionize both industries.

Reason #3 to support the Liberal-NDP Coalition

In the last federal election in October, Dr. Andrew Weaver — a noted climate scientist and author honored by the Nobel Prize Committee — urged Canadians to vote for the environment and remove Stephen Harper from the Prime Minister’s office. He was joined by 120 of Canada’s top scientists who — in an unprecedented move — urged Canadians to vote strategically to defeat the Conservatives.

It’s rare for scientists to leave their proverbial ivory towers and comment on political matters, but many are now doing so because climate change is running so fast and so hard, and events that weren’t expected to happen for 100 years — like the melting of Greenland — are happening today. Weaver, who wrote a terrific global warming primer called Keeping Our Cool, calls climate change the defining issue of our time.

But that letter was a rare thing, so the climate change debate is not being framed by climate change experts in Canada, but by politicians and right-wing commentators who, as my dear departed mother loved to say, don’t have a leg to stand on. And there’s a reason why this is so.

Taking a page from George Bush’s immoral but surprisingly effective playbook, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are muzzling scientists. The experts aren’t allowed to talk to Canadian journalists — and by extension — Canadians. As far as I’m concerned, the assault on science should be one of the top stories of 2008, but it was only reported here and there, and often buried on page 7 at the newspapers that ran with it.

Here’s the background. After Canada was roundly condemned at the Bali climate change summit in December 2007, then-Environment Minister John Baird ordered climate scientists at Environment Canada to stop talking to the media without his office’s official permission. Baird, a lumbering and heavy-handed partisan, was tired of critical headlines and being forced to answer climate change questions that were beyond his ken.

On the surface, you may not think this a big deal. But if you’ve ever worked in a news room, you understand how this simple act can essentially silence debate and dissenting opinion. If you have a story to write on federal of provincial government policy, and the deadline is tight, you may not have the time to search for experts who can provide an insightful comment or two. Environment Canada is your go-to source, with a bevy of experts as near as your phone.

Now, suddenly, you can’t call them for a timely quote. So you could try an environmental group like the Suzuki Foundation or the Sierra Club, but far too many right wingers unfairly think of them as tree-loving, granola-eating socialists, and wrongly dismiss their views as unscientific alarmism. So then you need to look for centers of climate excellence at universities. Presuming your Google search is successful, you’ll find professors like Dr. Weaver. Unfortunately, they have classes to teach, seminars to run, conferences to attend, research to oversee, and they lead thoroughly busy lives. With that deadline looming, and a surly editor screaming for your copy, you may not be able to wait upon your expert.

And so it goes. Harper doesn’t want Canadians to know that, on the international stage, we are now deemed the most egregious of the world’s climate villains, staking out a selfish position that will result in death and misery in countries most affected by climate change.

For proof that this policy is on-going, you need look no futher than last month at Poznan. Senior Environment Canada scientist Don MacIver was told — while enroute to the airport — that his presence at the international climate summit was not required. As chair, he was also scheduled to speak that the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) climate conference — the group was also paying his travel costs — but Environment Minister Jim Prentice refused permission for him to attend. Prentice suggested that it was simply about expenses, but if you can’t see through that bullshit, you need to take a course in media literacy.

Unable to fulfill his reponsibilities at the WMO, MacIver resigned.

“It is clear that a significant tipping point has been crossed,” MacIver wrote to senior management at Environment Canada in an e-mail from Dec. 4 that was obtained by Canwest News Service. “I have been placed in an untenable position and I say this with great reluctance because I remain hopeful that the essential milestones for World Climate Conference-3 can be achieved. However, given the delays in EC’s support for this globally significant event and the ongoing embarrassment to Canada, it is clear that another chair from another supporting country is needed to provide critical leadership.”

It’s scandalous that our scientists have been muzzled; this is a story that sounds more appropriate to the Sovet Union of the 1960s, not Canada in 2009.

________________________

Please join our campaign to support the Liberal-NDP Coalition.

There are two other stories (here and here) in this series.

When it comes to climate change, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has no international credibility. But if we’re going to be honest, the Liberal Party under Jean Chretien and Paul Martin also did very little to prepare Canada for the challenges we now face. (Also see our first entry in this series).

Still, we didn’t know then what he know now. Some time around 2004, the evidence supporting climate change became overwhelming, and it transitioned from a generally-accepted scientific theory into a scientific fact. But that’s not all: The pace of climate change has accelerated, so even the worst-case scenarios entertained in the IPCC Fourth Assessment have been shown to be woefully optimistic. That’s why Environment Canada scientists are no longer allowed to talk to the press because the science — and their comments — would profoundly embarrass the Prime Minister.

You see, climate scientists know that climate change is accelerating beyond all expectations. Events that were expected to take 60 or 70 years are happening right before our eyes. Greenland is melting. Tundra that has been frozen for millennia is rapidly thawing. Sea levels are rising. Huge glaciers placed by the last ice age are calving prodigiously, leaving behind a barren and diminished landscape.

Over the last few years, climate change has morphed into the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced, greater than the Cold War, greater than Hitler’s rise to power. People describe such sentiments as alarmist, but the simple truth is that we are balancing on a precipice, and the actions we take in the next three or four years will either enrich, or impoverish, the lives of all those who follow.

Stephen Harper became Prime Minister during this era of a new understanding. His Liberal predecessors might not have done much to combat climate change, but they did provide him with the healthiest economy among G8 nations, with a recurring annual surplus of $12 – $14 billion. What an incredible opportunity we have wasted! Instead of using that money to launch a green revolution, as developed countries throughout the world are doing, Harper cut the GST by 2 points, and offered tax breaks to the wealthiest Canadians. As a result, Canada has been running a deficit throughout 2008, and we will add greatly to our accumulated debt over the next three years as we attempt to correct Harper’s mistakes.

I believe that Canadians must face a moral imperative. We didn’t inherit our country from our parents, we’re borrowing it from our children. We have been unthinking caretakers and we have created a horrible mess. It’s time to take responsibility.

I have to believe that we are a better country than we have been for the last decade. At a time when all 27 member states in the European Union are within striking distance of their Kyoto obligations, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have grown by 28 percent since 1990. That is the most shameful record among developed nations.

We are the worst of the worst, an unrepentant villain. As a country, we should be profoundly and utterly embarrassed. And with the Alberta Oil Sands — Planet Earth’s most toxic environmental disaster — set to expand by leaps and bounds once to price of oil rises, we will assume the dubious mantel of being the world’s most selfish developed nation, and that’s saying something. People point fingers at countries like China and India, but the simple truth is that the average Chinese emits about one-fifth as many greenhouse gases as the average Haligonian. The average Indian has but one twentieth the carbon footprint of the average Calgarian.

NOT Turning the Corner: Canada’s CO2 emissions WILL rise

All four opposition parties — the Liberals, NDP, Bloc Québécois, and the Green Party — believe that we must protect the environment. While the Conservative Party has bamboozled the country into believing that it’s working to cut emissions, Harper is quietly trying to lock us into a fossil fuel economy for a generation — or more. The Conservative proposal, called Turning the Corner, is better described as business as usual. While it does take a few tentative steps toward energy efficiency, most respected analysts are predicting that Canada’s greenhouse emissions will rise dramatically in the next decade, especially as Oil Sand development escalates. The Conservatives may argue that we’ve turned the corner but, in reality, they’re leading us down a dead-end street.

Consider this analysis, compiled by the David Suzuki Foundation just before the 2007 international climate summit in Bali, where former Environment Minister John Baird did everything he could to stifle progress (and where the Canadian and US delegations were booed).*

The current federal government has consistently made clear that it will not attempt to meet Canada’s Kyoto phase 1 target. It has ruled out any public funding for emission-reduction projects in developing countries that would count towards Canada’s target (through Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism). The government has also failed to make any commitment to accept Kyoto’s penalties for non-compliance with targets.

As the only nation to have agreed to be legally bound by a Kyoto target and then reneged on it, Canada enters the negotiations in Bali with severely weakened credibility. Any effort to persuade other major emitters to take on new commitments will surely be hampered by the government’s rejection of its own existing obligations.

Canada will also arrive in Bali with an emission-reduction plan that every independent reviewer has found will fall short of even the targets that the government has substituted for Kyoto’s. After performing a modelling analysis for the C.D. Howe Institute, economist Mark Jaccard concluded that the government’s plan would allow Canada’s emissions remain indefinitely above current levels.

The Deutsche Bank’s analysis of the plan reached a similar conclusion:

“…because the Turning the Corner plan allows for the offsetting of emissions at what we think is too low a price to incentivize investment in new low-carbon technologies, we think that even these much less ambitious targets will probably not be achieved. In short, under current policies we would expect Canada’s industrial GHG emissions to continue rising over 2006–20.”

The Pembina Institute’s analysis uncovered numerous loopholes and gaps that undermine the credibility of the government’s target for 2020, and concluded that the government’s proposed policies have little chance of meeting its near-term target of stopping the growth in Canada’s GHG pollution by 2010–12, or even by 2020.

A key factor in these conclusions is the government’s decision to rely on “intensity” targets (targets for emissions per unit of production) instead of absolute emission targets for industry. Intensity targets allow emissions to continue to rise when industrial production is increasing rapidly.

Finally, the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) scrutinized each element of the government’s emission-reduction plan. Of the 23 measures in the plan, the NRTEE concluded that the government had “likely overestimated” the emission reductions from six of seven of the measures (including all three regulatory measures), and that there was “insufficient information to reach a conclusion” on the ability of 15 of the measures to reach their targets.

End Game

Writing in The National Post [November 2007, former] Minister Baird stated that “Canada is well placed to be a bridge between those nations that are signatory to Kyoto and those that aren’t.”

The U.S. is the best-known Kyoto outlier and one of the world’s top two emitters, so it was almost certainly one of the nations that Minister Baird had in mind. However, a comparison of Canada’s position with that of the U.S. and the EU finds Canada aligned much more closely with the [Bush administration's war-on-science polemics] than the more climate-friendly policies of the EU. Clearly, Canada’s credibility as a bridge is in doubt.

In addition to being a bridge between nations, the Government of Canada is seeking recognition as a “leader” in the global effort to combat climate change. In a recent speech, Prime Minister Harper stated: “We want to be a world leader in the fight against global warming and the development of clean energy. We want to lead, not by lecturing, but by example.”

[Former] Minister Baird has gone even further and claimed that Canada is already a leader, writing that “Canada has taken a leadership role on the international front as an important player in the effort against climate change.”

The Prime Minister’s desire to lead others is seriously undermined by Canada’s track record on Kyoto phase 1, the weakness of its current targets for post-2012, and the failing grade that the government’s plan has received from four independent analyses. The Government of Canada to [needs to bring] its climate policies in line with its rhetoric.

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* Canada was booed at the 2007 climate summit in Bali; in 2008, we were named the Collosal Fossil for doing more to stifle progress than any other nation on earth.