General

“A corrupt petro-state”

George Monbiot says Canada is the major obstacle to a deal in Copenhagen

Stephen Harper’s foot-dragging on climate change (or if you rather, prudent political strategy of waiting until the US announced its own reduction targets) has brought his government its fair share of domestic criticism. But few would predict the sort of loathing unleashed in this Guardian column by British author and environmentalist George Monbiot. Canada, he proclaims, is to climate change “what Japan is to whaling” and “the”—not “a”— major obstacle to a deal at the upcoming Copenhagen summit. “Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.” Monbiot says the Harper government has done everything in its power in recent months to wreck the talks, and in turn, has earned the enmity of the world’s environmentalists and many of its political leaders. And he identifies Alberta’s tar sands, and the vast amount of money they generate, as the reason Canada is being transformed into “a corrupt petro-state.”

The Guardian

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