While Stephen Harper leads the world now in foot-dragging on hard targets for Greenhouse Gas emissions, newly victorious Kevin Rudd of Australia shows that he means business on the environmental front:
Australia’s new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, made climate change his top priority on Sunday, seeking advice on ratifying the Kyoto pact and telling Indonesia he will go to December’s UN climate summit in Bali…Rudd …planned talks with officials and advisers about administrative arrangements for ratification of Kyoto as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, while Harper claims that his position on aspirational targets and/or waiting until everyone gets onboard with hard caps is “the strong position” on climate change, other countries criticisms continue to point at it rather as a lone position, and one designed to do as little as possible with regards to this issue:
Several countries, including Britain, have argued that it is up to the developed countries to take the lead in order to get polluting countries such as China and India to eventually see the value in reducing greenhouse gases that are causing global warming…Officials from other Commonwealth countries also said Canada’s position is a recipe to do nothing because the developing countries are not going to step up to the plate.
While some Commonwealth countries were careful to avoid calling out Canada, Malaysia wasn’t one of those countries, calling Harper’s attitude “disappointing”.
In short, rather then this being a “strong position”, as Harper and Baird will claim, they have virtually isolated themselves in the world.
UPDATE@2:55PM: Darren is right. We as Canadians certainly shouldn’t be proud, as Harper claims. We should be downright ashamed of ourselves and ashamed of Harper and his Cons. for sullying Canada’s international name. The only countries who are “proud” of Canada’s position are Dubya in the White House for the foot-dragging display we just carried on, and the Chinese and Indians, for knowing that our take on things means nothing will get done and there will be less pressure on them to do any action of their own.
Rudd talks a good game just like Dion and the Liberals talked a good game. Just wait until Australia actually has to make some hard decisions on the environment where they have to put their money where their mouth is . . . they’ll take the same approach as the Liberals under Dion’s watch. ALL TALK AND NO ACTION!