So, what did that all mean for a Canada-U.S. climate change strategy?
This afternoon’s Harper-Obama press conference left us with more questions than answers. In four years, will we share a carbon market? Will Canada retain its intensity targets while the U.S. commits to absolute reductions in greenhouse gases? Will we have cap and trade? It’s all still anybody’s guess. What we do know is, we’re likely going to get a new electric grid. Who saw that coming? The presser, in which Harper pleaded ignorance on the differences between absolute and intensity targets—”these are just two different ways of measuring the same thing,” he said—left an awful lot of room for criticism. “I think it was a pretty embarrassing day for Canada with respect to climate change policy,” says Marlo Raynolds, executive director of the Pembina Institute environmental group, who saw Obama’s reference to Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s interest in the issue as a rebuke to Canada. “Mexico,” says Raynolds, “a country with one-fifth of the GDP per capita than Canada.” Yet there were
