The Guardian UK reports, “The Canadian government admitted this week that it deliberately left out data indicating a 20% rise in emissions from the Alberta tar sands when it submitted its annual inventory to the United Nations.”
“The deliberate exclusion does not amount to an attempt to deceive the UN about Canada’s total emissions. Emissions from the tar sands were incorporated in the overall tally in the report. But it does suggest that the government is anxious to obscure the source of its fastest-growing source of climate pollution: the Alberta tar sands.”
“As environmental groups and others have regularly noted, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been too focused on the tar sands as an image problem, rather than an environmental one. Now it seems as if that approach has infected government institutions, with Environment Canada aiding the effort to obscure irksome figures and facts.”
“‘It’s a consistent pattern that we have seen on the part of the Harper government to really attempt to spin the tar sands,’ said Andrea Harden-Donahue, energy campaigner at the Council of Canadians, the country’s biggest citizens’ group.”
The full article is at http://guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/jun/01/canada-tar-sands-carbon-emissions?cat=environment&type=article.
