Canada: 'Thuggish petro-state'?

Global warming experts say Canada's demands at Copenhagen could threaten "the wellbeing of the world"

Canada—yes, Canada—is threatening the world’s future, according to climate change experts, by emerging as the major obstacle to an agreement at the Copenhagen climate change summit. Canada removed itself from the Kyoto protocol as its greenhouse-gas emissions rose 26 percent between 1990 and 2007—it was to have cut them by 6 percent—and its massive tar-sand oil fields in Alberta have been deemed a global-warming disaster. Is peaceful, liberal Canada really an evil, “criminally negligent” polluter? (Watch a panel discuss Canada's reluctance to join climate change efforts)

Canada is downright villainous: I used to believe the U.S. was doing the most to “sabotage a new climate change agreement,” says George Monbiot in the London Guardian. “I was wrong.” Canada has turned into a “thuggish petro-state,” destroying a “pristine” area the size of England to cash in on the “dirtiest commodity known to man.” We can't let the corrupt "tar barons of Alberta" scupper Copenhagen.

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