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.