The Toronto Star reports that, “Harper landed in Singapore Friday (for the APEC summit) and will also visit India, China and South Korea (for trade talks) in the next month. But he has turned down an invitation from the Danish government to attend the much-anticipated climate summit…”
By not going, Harper has “rebuffed United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who said attendance by world leaders will be crucial for breaking the impasse in negotiations.”
THE HARPER GOVERNMENT’S POSITION FOR THE TALKS “The federal government intends to harmonize its climate change policies with those emerging in the United States in the hope of creating an integrated market to restrict greenhouse gases and allow polluting companies to trade emission credits with greener firms. Canada is also sticking to the goal of cutting emissions in 2020 to 20 per cent below 2006 levels, despite the urging of environmentalists and many other countries who have tougher targets.”
Prentice says his goal is “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible and as far as possible, without killing the economy and making the cure worse than the disease.”
This is a message that Harper will reportedly be taking to the annual APEC summit this weekend.
THE COUNCIL OF CANADIANS
The Council of Canadians will be on the ground in Copenhagen, providing updates on negotiations inside the conference and taking part in numerous events and climate justice movement activities happening outside.
For more information on our climate justice campaign, please go to http://canadians.org/energy/issues/climatejustice/index.html.
The Toronto Star article is at http://www.thestar.com/mobile/canada/article/725504.
