Canada poised to kill Kyoto? 24 January 06

The Conservatives have won Canada’s general election, chucking out a Liberal Party saddled with allegations of corruption. The Conservative leader Stephen Harper has pledged to cut taxes and do all the usual things Conservatives do, but buried within the small print is a proposal unlikely to sit well with Canada’s recent Kyoto-championing at last December’s Montreal talks. According to the BC-based online paper The Tyee, Harper is committed to abandoning Kyoto’s emissions limits in favour of a ‘made-in-Canada’ approach which is handwritten by his big business buddies in the energy sector. And if you don’t know how dirty that can be, check out this Wired feature on Alberta’s tar pits – destined, if the businessmen are to be believed, to make Canada the Saudi Arabia of the north. There’s just one catch: processing heavy oil is extremely energy-intensive, and Canada is already way past its Kyoto target. With the lure of petro-dollars paid by the energy-hungry behemoth to the south, Canada has a difficult choice to make. And it looks like Kyoto might have to go.