Sole responsibility

The Globe and Mail reports on a climate-change study whose results can't be blamed on anybody but the Cons, as Canada ranks last in the G8 (with a "complete lack of compliance") when it comes to meeting commitments made just last summer:

Canada ranks dead last among members of the G8 industrialized countries when it comes to keeping a pledge made last year to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a report prepared by researchers at the University of Toronto.

Canada was the only Group of Eight country deemed to have posted a complete lack of compliance with the greenhouse-gas reduction goal set at last summer's G8 summit in St. Petersburg.

Canada has "no plan" to cut its emissions in the short or long term, and could have rising output of the gases blamed for global warming under the Conservatives' Clean Air Act because the legislation doesn't cap releases, the report said...

The G8 has fulfilled only 31 per cent of its commitments since the summit last July. It has not scored this poorly since mid-2002, according to the report.

On climate change, the countries pledged last year "to meet our shared . . . objectives of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions."...

"Canada received the lowest score because of the Harper government's change in policy and attitude towards the Kyoto Protocol," said Brian Kolenda, co-director of the compliance unit on the U of T's G8 research group.

Not that such a report is likely to stop Baird and company from trying desperately to point across the aisle. But virtually all recent developments suggest that the Cons' current plan consists of nothing more than a more aggressive PR campaign behind the same useless "Clean Air Act". And it seems all too likely that the complete failures will continue to pile up as long as the Cons are in power and the Libs refuse to get anything done.