Let's avoid a deal

The governments of Canada and the U.S. seem to be in a battle as to who can take the most asinine position in order to prevent any agreement at the G8 summit on climate change. And despite yesterday's strong effort from Bush in that department, Canada seems to have retaken the lead today by demanding that Canada be considered a "special" country so as to avoid the effects of any deal:

Stephen Harper will have a climate-change message for his fellow leaders at next week's G8 summit: Canada is special when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases.

With the leaders attempting to reach a deal on climate change, the prime minister will seek recognition of the unique challenges Canada faces in tackling the problem.

Senior Canadian officials told journalists at a pre-summit briefing that any acceptable deal would need to recognize this country's growing economy, growing population, and booming oil industry.

Those factors make Canada - in the words of one official - special and unique in the G8.

It shouldn't come as much surprise that the excuses put forward by the Cons are nothing more than hollow attempts to shirk any responsibility for reducing emissions in the future.

While Canada is technically above the other G8 countries in the first two areas cited, the level of difference is relatively small (indeed negligible as compared to the U.S.). And more importantly, there's little reason to think that the current trends will be constant over the 40+ year time span that the talks are meant to cover.

As for Canada's oil production, it's entirely possible that future technological development will reduce the emission impact of the industry long before the included targets take effect. And surely a main goal of any agreement has to be to set up conditions will encourage the development of such technology, rather than giving extra credit based on its absence.

It thus seems all too clear that the Con position is based purely on a search for excuses to secure a lower reduction requirement than other G8 countries will face. And that can only encourage other countries to seek to do the same, rather than focusing on how to agree on a reasonable level of reductions all around.

Of course, the likelihood of any deal was already slim to none due to the U.S.' desire to kick any agreement down the road by over a year. But with Deceivin' Stephen playing the role of dishonest broker in an effort to further sandbag the proceedings, both Canada's reputation and global environmental goals figure to suffer.