I typically do not re-post articles, but yesterday's piece is the Guardian is noteworthy. Titled "Canada's image in tatters" the article details at length Canada's roll as a corrupt petro-state, and the litany of damage our nation has caused to climate change negotiations.

The following is an excerpt that clearly paints Canada's true colours when it comes to the environment.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

In 2006 the new Canadian government announced it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%.... the future cut Canada has volunteered is smaller than that of any other rich nation.

After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world's 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th.

In June this year the media obtained Canadian briefing documents which showed the government was scheming to divide the Europeans. During the meeting in Bangkok in October, almost the entire developing world bloc walked out when the Canadian delegate was speaking, as they were so revolted by his bullying. Last week the Commonwealth heads of government battled for hours (and eventually won) against Canada's obstructions. A concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth.

In Copenhagen next week, this country will do everything in its power to wreck the talks. The rest of the world must do everything in its power to stop it.

None of this should represent news to any reasonably well informed Canadian. Seeing it laid out in one single column, however, should do more than give us pause. It should be the start of a serious conversation about what it is to be Canadian, and about what role we want to play in the world.

And nowhere is this issue more relevant than with respect to climate change, a crisis that most Canadians feel, "is the planet's defining crisis".

Realistic 3D cover illustration about data clouds as the new oil.

More at Sevensheaven.nl

Cartoon for the Dutch Nu.nl news website, about the return of Shell to Iraq to establish an increased oil production.

More at Sevensheaven.nl

Former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed is predicting a "war" between the federal government and Alberta over pollution caused by the growing oil sands industry. He says the conflict could be a threat to national unity that will likely escalate to the Supreme Court of Canada as Alberta fights for the right of the province to develop its natural resources as it sees fit.

It doesn't get more dramatic than that.

Lougheed has a history of being an outspoken critic of provincial and federal politics since leaving office in 1985. He's also let his own concern about the oil sands be known, calling the pace of development "haphazard" and a threat to the environment.

Albertans themselves will hold the key to the conflict. If they make the greening of the oil sands a top political issue, the provincial government will likely be forced to negotiate ways to address this with the feds. Greenhouse gas emissions can start to be brought under control, water diversions can be minimized, and the province can avoid turning nearly a quarter of it's landspace into an open pit oil mine. If they choose to hang their hat on their "right" to develop the oil sands "as they see fit", then Canadian greenhouse emissions will spiral, entire ecosystems will be lost, and the country will be locked in a political turf war that will last decades.

In related news, Imperial Oil announced first half net income of $1.49 billion, up from $1.43 billion for the first half of 2006.

A geyser of oil sprung up from the streets of a Vancouver suburb yesterday, after a construction crew's backhoe inadvertently broke a pipeline that connected a refinery to a refuelling facility in the harbour.

It's still unknown how much oil was spilled. Though certainly a small spill, the oil quickly made it's way into Burrard Inlent. Photo's below, courtesy of Global TV News.

We all have our own personal fantasy worlds. Mine is to live in a world of balanced political debate where liberal and conservative politicians bring forward different political strategies to address common social problems.

What a world that would be - the perfect balance between tough government regulations and well funded programs, with aggressive fiscal responsibility and market advocacy. The reality is that in the issue of global warming, the real world has devolved into one where the true controlling political party invests millions of dollars to convince you, the voter, of a fantasy world of their choosing - one where cheap, everlasting, and harmless fossil fuels will better our lives for eternity.

Let's be perfectly honest on this one. Metaphorically, there are precisely two people in the world who do not believe in the danger of human generated global warming - The President of the United States and the CEO of Exxon-Mobil. Every other voice chiming in with their agreement are either a paid employee of one of those two individuals - in the form of direct employees, think tanks, media outlets, editorial writers, and yes, the conservative leaders of Canada and Australia - or one of the minority of the general public that they have managed to convince with lies and misinformation. It is on this foundation that magazines like The Economist can publish the following editorial on London's climate change policy without being laughed off of the news stand.

Haringey's plan is merely the latest in a flowering of official greenery. Ken Livingstone, London's mayor, has mooted tinkering with the city's pioneering congestion charge, which already rewards drivers of electric and gas-powered cars by exempting them from the £8-a-day charge. The mayor wants to go further, cutting prices for cleaner cars and hiking them for dirty ones. If he gets his way, drivers of the biggest cars could pay £25 to drive into the city centre. Mr Livingstone's opponents in the London Assembly accuse him of being more interested in revenue-raising than road-clearing.

It is not just local government that has caught the green bug. Earlier in the month, the government wondered publicly about adding a “carbon cost” to the price of petrol by including motor fuel in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, which limits the amount of carbon dioxide certain industries can produce.

But none of these plans is obviously a good idea. Britons are already taxed twice on their cars' carbon emissions: once by a sales tax on petrol, and again by a separate tax levied on the cars themselves. And exemptions, however well-intentioned, work against the purported aim of London's congestion charge—clean vehicles take up just as much road space as dirty ones.

Nice positioning statement. But we weren't talking about gas prices and traffic congestion. We were solving the global warming problem.

Raising the cost of gas and the cost of driving polluting vehicles is actually the most conservative type of strategy available in addressing climate change. By placing a cost on the problem (too many cars burning too much fuel), you allow the public to make the right choices by purchasing consumer products that will benefit (or be less harmful) to the environment. Consumers can opt out of higher costs by choosing more cost effective and fuel efficient options while business still sells goods, consumers still have choice, and the economy canl hum along while we all take productive steps towards solving the climate crisis.

In an honest report, London's policy of making fuel hogs expensive and high mileage cars cheap would be embraced as a conservative victory in the fight against global warming. That doesn't happen because the controlling political party alluded to at this articles beginning is not liberal, nor conservative, but capitalist. And that political force has bent the foundation of both parties so far askew that both are hard pressed to address global warming or any genuine social concern.

Democratic political systems are concerned with providing the best solutions to the problems of society. A liberal approach advocates stronger government involvement and spending, while a conservative approach advocates minimum government intervention and free market principles, but both strive towards the same end - the betterment of society.

The political force of capitalism is not concerned with the end of a better society or in solving problems. By nature, it is a philosophy based on the principle of "the end justifies the means". The only end is profit, and any means are justified so long as they realize more profit. Our acceptance of that principle isn't limited to oil, it pervades all business enterprises of our society. Consequently, that 'ends justify the means' philosophy has infected our political and decision making processes so thoroughly that we are losing the ability to question it.

The root of the world's two most prominent problems, the war in Iraq and the danger of global warming, both stem from the pursuit and justification of the same ends. Namely, the continued growth of oil profits, and the continued expansion the economies that rely on burning it. In Iraq, the US justified both the use of force and a case for war that was based on outright falsehoods in order to secure greater access to the world's second largest deposit of conventional oil. In the case of global warming, the use of deception, misinformation and personal attacks on scientists are likewise justified as the means necessary to protect our economy.

As long as we accept those ends - the dominance of the oil industry in our economy, and most importantly our reliance on that same industry for our continued prosperity, genuine global warming policy will continue to be road blocked, and Iraq will not be the last oil rich nation to fall under the control of a hostile foreign power.

Change our ends and the means will inevitably follow.