George Monbiot, one of Europe’s top environmental writers, has spoken out about Canada’s tarnished image in a recent Guardian Newspaper editorial - Canada Tar Sands Copenhagen Climate Deal.
The popular and influential journalist pulls no punches as he describes Canada as the main obstacle to a deal in Copenhagen in December 2009.
Canada has long held a somewhat mythologized image internationally as a bastion of decency and environmentalism, but Canadians have seen an increasingly different picture with continued maltreatment of First Nations peoples, over-fishing, the bloody seal hunt, clearcut logging, national inactivity on climate change and the perpetual destruction from mining Alberta’s Tar Sands.Monbiot’s damning editorial explains how Canada has abandoned its Kyoto protocol greenhouse gas targets – in fact greenhouse gases emissions have not decreased, but risen by 26%. The Tar Sands is also a major block to climate change legislation. In fact, the Alberta Tar Sands operation is the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions, explains Monbiot.
The Canadian government “…is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works,” explains Monbiot. “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. Canada now threatens the wellbeing of the world.”
Read George Monbiot’s article here.
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