The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Poznań, Poland - COP 14 1-12 December 2008

Oh we can beat them-forever and ever
Then we could be heroes-just for one day

David Bowie, Heroes

good lord.

i recommend everyone get some solar panels.  obviously the government isn't going to do it for us here.

All Canadians should be embarrassed and concerned about this.  It will be interesting to hear a statement from Don McIver....

Yet another legacy of the Harper years.  Yay us.

and today we rank LAST on a list of 25 developed countries for Child care.  Amazing what a few short years will do.

I disagree.  There's 35 million of who need to share the blame.  Our environment didn't go to crap in 2 years.  Sighs is right (dammit!), we ALL need to do our part.

Of course, Alta.  But every nation in the world that HAS made progress, has only done it through government action.  We could have had that, but instead we have had a government that actively made the environment WORSE, on many fronts.

Correction: EVERY government we have ever had, has made the environment worse.  The point I was making is that it is not fair, or honest, to use Harper as your sole whipping boy on the environment.  While he certainly hasn't done any more, nor has he done any less than any other PM.

Well, I wouldn't say Harper hasn't done less, he scrapped Kyoto after the Liberal government made Canada one of the first signatories.

This is the government's responsibility. We pay our taxes so that they can support the Kyoto Protocol. Sighs is right because our government is to lazy and immature to act on it's own so we're the only ones that have any chance of making progress, not because it's our responsibility to do this.

.....and then completely ignored it.

We lag on aboriginal rights too.

I think that we as Canadians have bought our own hype.  We are a great country, or so we keep telling ourselves.  Yet we are doing so poorly compared to our western counterparts on child care, child poverty, mental health, and the enviroment, EI has been building a surplus instead of helping the people that it is supposed to just to name a few.  If you use the 10 times principle to compare ourselves to the US we have lost more jobs here than there but we are a great country and we are in great shape.

I really don't think that you can blame Harper for all this mess either.  The liberals spun their wheels on all these issues for years and years.  Not that Harper has made it any better.  Chretien's child poverty cure was to lower the poverty line, and all it cost to raise thousands of children out of poverty was the cost of the ink in the pen.  That didn't put any food in those kids stomachs but at least it made it look like he was doing something.

Oh, the Liberals have been universally useless on the environment.  They would not be, had Dion won, but they have been historically.

By contrast, Harper has been openly hostile to environmental concerns.  Empty lip service is still better than open hostility.

And this is indeed the situation.  This conference is not the first that a representative of the Harper government has been openly critical of scientific facts presented on climate change and the role Canada plays.

There is also the issue that this problem is beyond the control of individual Canadians - of course each of us needs to do our part but to truly achieve the reduction in emissions that are needed goes far beyond our capabilities.  This individual participation is a myth governments have been promoting for too long.

The single biggest contributor to Greenhouse Emissions is the generation of electricity from power stations - Annual Greenhouse Emissions By Sector.  While reducing our individual usage the reliance on fossil fuel power generation will negate our individual efforts.

The Government injects millions - probably billions - into the Canadian economy via either direct grants or indirect tax credits.  It could stimulate research and development into tangible methods of reducing emissions - but the desire to do so must be there and to date this desire has been patently lacking.

In September 2008 the Sierra Club of Canada issued an Environmental Report Card on all the major Federal parties' environmental plans.  Read it for yourself and then ask the question - Is our government doing enough?

Sierra Club Voters Guide to Climate Crisis Election

LB

Today we have a temporary aberration called “industrial capitalism” which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital.. the natural world and properly functioning societies. No sensible capitalist would do that.     Amory Lovins

I agree with Somegirl that Canadians tend to be myopic about our dismal performance vis a vis other developed nations in many areas including Kyoto.

We're too busy breaking our arm patting ourselves on the back.