Critics claim Canada failing to take climate change agreement seriously

World Today

As groundwork was laid for a new global climate agreement, Canada was coming under fire for failing to take climate change seriously. The country’s two largest trade partners, the U.S. and China, bot announced plans to step-up their carbon reduction plans.

Canada is set to miss targets it already set. Critics warned that a failure to act could cost Canada in the long-run. CCTV America’s Kristiaan Yeo reported from Toronto.

A joint announcement of climate change policies by the U.S. and China in November was described as a game-changer in international environmental politics, and a perfect prelude to the U.N. climate conference in Lima. But while China and America committed to long-term measures to cut carbon, a major supplier of their energy, Canada, remained quiet.

“It has no clear vision of the future in which climate change has to be taken serious. Stephen Harper comes from Alberta, in terms of his political base, and clearly has an oil man’s vision of the world,” Simon Dalby, chairman of the Center for International Governance and Innovation, said.

Harper’s Conservative government has failed to implement federal emissions rules and refused to commit to an emissions monitoring program beyond 2015. Under the prime minister’s leadership, Canada took the bold step of withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol.

As the world looks to a new global climate deal in Paris next December, Canada risks falling behind in the shift towards a carbon neutral economy, with its hopes still heavily on pegged to oil. Many said that would be unwise as Canada’s biggest buyer of oil, the U.S., moves away from the black stuff. With similar sentiments gaining ground in China, Canada may soon be forced to listen to its customers or find new ones.