John Baird continues Canada's obstructionist stance at COP16 in Cancun

It's clear from Baird comes out swinging at China at Cancun talks (Globe and Mail, Dec 8 2010) that John Baird intends to continue obstructing any meaningful progress on climate change at the COP16 conference in Cancun. Technically it's true that China has recently surpassed the U.S.A. as the largest GHG emitter on earth. It's also the most populous country on earth. Per capita, its emissions are 44th according to rediff.com. Canada ranks third per capita, behind Australia and U.S.A, and we may move up as we're taking no effective action (at least at the federal level) to do anything about it.

Insisting that China address its emissions on an absolute basis, when per capita it's so much ahead of Canada, can only be construed as an attempt to block progress on climate change. Perhaps our government also holds out some hope that China will voluntarily choke off its economic development (which still lags far behind those of North America, the main reason its emissions per capita are so much lower than ours) if it accedes to this position.

It's clear that the present government either doesn't believe that Climate Change is real, or believes that the "elite" that they seem to represent will be able to keep them safe, even as much of the rest of the world drowns or starves as climate change makes our world less habitable. Granted, the Liberals (though they paid lip service to Kyoto) really weren't serious about climate change either. Their one somewhat "green" candidate for Prime Minister, Stéphane Dion, was ungraciously cast aside when he lost to Harper in 2008. You can be sure that after that, his successor Michael Ignatieff won't be pushing too hard for environmental action.

What is clear is that the Harper government doesn't seem to care what the House of Commons thinks (let alone ordinary Canadians) but rather is guided by Conservative "values". The house passed the Climate Change Accountability Bill earlier this year (though without Conservative support) but in a surprise vote the senate defeated it on second reading. While distancing himself from any suggestion that he "ordered" the senate to kill the NDP , Harper was clearly supportive, saying that the bill was "completely irresponsible".

Is there any doubt that the profits of the oil patch are more important to the Harper government than slowing the damage that we're doing to the planet?