[A-List] Harper and Bush under fire from environmentalists

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx>]

Harper and Bush under fire from environmentalists
Mike De Souza, CanWest News Service
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=80120b49-2802-4286-9ae8-15a9538fda9b&k=10814
Published: Saturday, May 19, 2007

OTTAWA -- Canadian and American politicians renewed attacks on their 
respective governments Friday over concerns the Harper and Bush 
administrations are cooking up a scheme to undermine international 
action on climate change.

While Democratic representatives fired off a harsh three-page letter to 
U.S. President George W. Bush, urging him to reverse course, opposition 
MPs in Canada urged the Harper government to back away from plans to 
invest billions of dollars in a major gas pipeline project and accept a 
growing scientific consensus about the dangers of global warming.

"Canada has remained silent for weeks, and our international reputation 
is suffering," said Liberal MP John Godfrey. "Prime Minister (Stephen 
Harper) and President Bush share several points of view and even share 
some advisers. On top of that, they share inaction on the issue of 
climate change."
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Environment Minister John Baird insisted he supports the conclusions of 
recent reports from the United Nations on the latest peer-reviewed 
research into climate change.

"The government always acts appropriately," Baird said in the Commons. 
"It will push all countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

But, U.S. Democrats said they were "deeply concerned" about reports that 
their own government was trying to delay action by deleting lines and 
modifying warnings in a declaration being prepared for a G-8 summit next 
month. The declaration would underscore the danger of allowing global 
temperatures to rise more than 2 C above pre-industrial levels. Earlier 
this week, Canadian officials also expressed doubts about supporting the 
warnings at the G-8 summit.

"The scientific consensus tells us that it is too late to avoid some 
warming, but we may still have time to prevent dangerous warming," reads 
the letter from the Democrats, sent to Bush on Friday.

"Scientific studies show that a (2 C) increase in global temperatures 
could result in the extinction of nearly 30 per cent of all living 
species, bleaching of much of the world's coral, increased risk of wider 
spread of diseases like malaria, more damage from floods and storms, and 
increased drought in already dry regions."

In Ottawa, both the Bloc Quebecois and New Democrat environment critics 
blasted the Conservatives for considering new public spending to make 
the federal government the controlling stakeholder of a proposed 
$16.2-billion natural gas pipeline project in the Canadian northwest. 
Bloc MP Bernard Bigras said public money should be used to promote wind 
power development instead of subsidies for oil companies. The NDP's 
Nathan Cullen blamed the government for refusing to analyse the economic 
consequences of allowing global temperatures to rise by more than 2 C.

"It's one of the greatest threats, particularly to northern economies 
like Canada, and they haven't looked at it," Cullen said after question 
period. "But they are looking at buying a $16-billion pipeline. These 
guys have their priorities so screwed up."

Late in the afternoon, Jim Prentice, the minister responsible for native 
affairs and northern development, insisted the government has only a 
technical involvement in the pipeline project and is not seeking a 
controlling stake.

"Canada's new government is not considering ownership of the Mackenzie 
gas project, and I have conveyed this message directly to the 
proponents," Prentice in a statement. He added that the project "must 
make sense in terms of its economics and as public policy."

mdesouza@xxxxxxxxxxx
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