Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says Canada could teach the United States some lessons on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Baird tells The Canadian Press that the Obama administration should follow Canada’s lead on working to cut back on the use of coal-fired electricity generation.
Baird was responding to remarks by U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson, who said last week that President Barack Obama’s state-of-the-union address calling for swift action on climate change should also be interpreted as a challenge to Ottawa.
The Harper government has for years said it would remain in lockstep with the U.S. on climate change, but Baird is saying Canada has gone even further on coal.
Baird’s comments come as environmentalists descended on Washington for a major protest of Canada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline to carry Alberta oilsands bitumen to the U.S. Gulf coast.
A similar protest last year forced Obama to postpone the controversial Keystone decision until after the November presidential election.
This whole debate is useless.
The important pollutants are things like particulates (soot). You can get soot from burning diesel oil – like Toronto’s TTC buses do. Like diesel trucks do.
Soot has been implicated in children having lower IQ’s. ( Children who live closer to busy streets tend to have lower intelligence scores than those who live further away. )
Soot has been implicated in increased risk of premature childbirth. ( Intuitively, you can see a connection there. If a pregnant mother’s lungs are clogged with soot, the fetus is getting less oxygen from mother, and there is probably some biological mechanism to send the baby out into the free air so that it can breathe on its own that much sooner).