Copenhagen a success? Nope.

From The Globe and Mail

The 2009 Copenhagen summit has finished with a deal being signed between participating nations. Sounds good doesn’t it? The world’s leading countries agreeing to set tough new standards for meeting climate change targets. Well, not this time.

From CBC:

“However, the agreement is not binding and does not set new greenhouse-gas reduction targets. Instead, countries are to set their own emission-reduction commitments, which would not be legally binding.”

Is anyone really surprised that Prime Minister Stephen Harper agreed to this? Since his first minority government in 2006, Harper has been given “failing grades” by the Sierra Club of Canada, the government’s own environmental advisory committee slammed Harper’s efforts, and most recently the Liberal Part of Canada has stood up and flat out declared Harper a “climate-change denier.“

So the only thing we have gained from the Copenhagen summit is a non-binding agreement for Canada to create its own targets to reach, which as CBC has stated, “would not be legally binding.” So what will  Harper, who over and over again has been shown to not have climate change at the top of his priority list, do when, rather, if this comes up in the House of Commons?

Well, he will play politics as usual. Put forward some mediocre targets that environmentalists view more as an insult than any meaningful step forward, then he will call for unity in the House of Commons, so “together as Canadians we can create a ‘made-in-Canada’ climate policy to help move out country into the future and protect our unborn grandchildren…” enter bland political rhetoric here.

The fact remains that Harper is acting in the interest of one section of Canada, not very surprisingly, the west. Alberta in particular. It is hard to blame Harper for wanting to keep the economic boom going in Alberta, it would be (almost) impossible for him to balance the needs and wants of the oil economy with the environmentalists, though to enter half-heartedly enter into this debate in the manner that Harper seems to be, is simply insulting to not only the world but all Canadians.

~James