Comment on Canadian media coverage of Copenhagen summit

The original intention of this blog was to provide a ‘non-mainstream’ news source about the Copenhagen summit. That this is badly needed is obvious by the current coverage of the Copenhagen conference in the Canadian media.

  The past few days, Canada’s bad reputation on climate change was confirmed almost everyday. Canada has been singled out as a country or as a member of the Umbrella Group for obstructing an ambitious agreement during the daily Fossil of the Day awards. Yesterday, Canada even won the award for its efforts to change the important 1990 baseline year. Yesterday, the Canadian Youth Delegation staged a demonstration, calling on the Harper government to “stop tarring our image”.   However, in their efforts to remain "balanced", the mainstream press jumped on a quote of Yvo de Boer, that Canada was “negotiating very constructively in this process”. An example is yesterday’s article by Kelly Cryderman of the Calgary Herald: “UN climate chief gives Canada credit” (December 10, 2009). When it comes to climate change, the press seems to be obsessed with providing ‘balanced’ reporting, one day calling out the big polluters and the next day taking an apologetic stance. Or covering the reports of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and then giving a forum to industry-financed climate change deniers.   Very frustrating. When it comes to climate change, the peer-reviewed, Nobel Prize winning truth is quite simple: Fossil fuel consumption produces CO2, which leads to higher greenhouse gas concentrations levels in the atmosphere, which in turn leads to higher global temperatures. Countries like Canada that continue to defend polluters like the coal industry, tar sands producers and end-of-tailpipe solutions such as carbon capture and sequestration should be called out for what they are: Part of the problem, not the solution. This may not be balanced, but it would be the objective truth.   Geert