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Gore blasts Canada's greenhouse-gas plan
AFP
MONTREAL
Petroleumworld.com 04 30 07Environmental crusader and former US vice president Al Gore on Saturday accused the Canadian government of preparing a fraudulent emissions cutback plan, drawing a sharp response from Ottowa.
In Toronto to present his global-warming film "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore sharply criticized the new strategy unveiled Thursday by the Canadian environment minister, John Baird.
The strategy aims to cut greenhouse-gas emissions linked to global warming by 150 megatonnes, or 20 percent, by 2020.
However, the cutbacks would be based on emission levels in 2006, rather than 1990, the reference year for the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations pact ratified by 168 countries, including Canada, and aimed at reducing the emissions.
The United States is among those states which have not ratified it.
Gore criticized Canada's plan for lacking defined targets for emission reductions.
"I'm hearing that a reduction in intensity is going to be presented to the Canadian people as a legitimate policy. In my opinion it is a complete and total fraud. It is designed to mislead the Canadian people," Gore said.
Nevertheless, he admitted he had "no right to interfere in your decisions."
In a strongly worded statement, Baird said it was "regrettable that the former US vice president decided to speak out without ever having been briefed on the contents of our plan."
"It is difficult to accept criticism from someone who preaches about climate change, but who never submitted the Kyoto Protocol to a vote in the United States Senate," the environment minister said.
"The fact is our plan is vastly tougher than any measures introduced by the administration of which the former vice president was a member," he said.
"I am ready to meet with Mr. Gore at any time to discuss the climate change threat and our government's tough plan to reduce Canada's emissions."
Baird, in announcing the plan Thursday, said the Kyoto targets which were agreed by a previous Liberal government in 1998 and ratified in 2002 were unattainable.
Canada had agreed under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions to 6.0 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, but emissions have instead increased by 35 percent.
AFP 28 2345 GMT 04 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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