Fuelling the Climate Change Fire
- The conservative government has backed out of its Kyoto commitments, which are nowhere near what reasonable science is calling for. They cut all incentives for homes, vehicles, and industry to become more energy efficient.
- Their first step in office was to dismantle the One Tonne Challenge, a project that was funding hundreds of community projects to reduce greenhouse Canadians’ gas emissions and in which millions had already been invested.
- They dismantled the acclaimed Energuide program, which was providing energy retrofits at cost to low-income homes.
- They support unregulated growth of the tar sands, which are one of the most emissions-intensive forms of energy production.
- They continue to use misleading targets and language in an attempt to hide their refusal to act on climate change. They deliberately used 2006 as a baseline year from which to target emissions’ cuts, as opposed to the world standard of 1990, to confuse the public.
- They secretly sponsored a representative of the oil industry to attend a high level climate change conference, while refusing to include anybody else, including opposition parties, faith groups, environmental groups, or youth representatives.
- A leaked government memo revealed The Harper Government’s plans to adopt an obstructionist negotiating position at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Bali.
- On Environment Minister John Baird’s first night in Bali, he blamed environmentalists for failing to prevent climate change (a statement that in addition to being uneducated and misguided, is outright hostile to those working to educate the public about climate change for years).
* The Minister failed to explain Canada’s climate change policy at an official United Nations conference in Bali, arriving in flip flops to survey the room and leaving the presentation to industry representatives.
- The Minister refused to accept a petition from Canadians asking for action on climate change. His security staff threatened to have the young presenters (some of whom were 17 and 18 years old) thrown into Indonesian jail.
- The Minister failed to attend a meeting on issues of climate change with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon after being personally invited.
- Canada’s performance was called “hypocritical” by the Yvo De Boer, the UN’s chief climate diplomat, “unconstructive” by the German Delegation, and “immoral” by a negotiator from Bangladesh.
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