Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who talked with U.S. President Barack Obama during the G8 Summit in June and again at last’s week's G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, has proposed a North American strategy on climate change in a bid to gain approval for the Keystone XL pipeline, CBC News has learned.
Photo Credit: Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press

Canada seeks deal for U.S. pipeline okay—sources

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Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper has sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama offering to work more closely on emission regulation to help win approval for the Keystone XL pipeline, according to domestic public broadcaster, CBC. That pipeline would move crude extracted from oilsands in western Canada to refineries in Texas.

Environmentalists in both Canada and the U.S. are vehemently opposed to the project and Obama said in June “Our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net effects of the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward.”

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The U.S. government insists crude from the oilsands is far more carbon-intensive than other oil used by Americans. © CBC

“We don’t need the pipeline”– environmentalist

“We don’t need the pipeline,” says John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada. “The Americans don’t need it to meet their energy needs. We should be leaving the oil in the ground where it is instead of putting it into the atmosphere where it’s causing climate change.”

Calling Canada’s climate change record since 2006 a disaster, Bennett says he will send his own letter to Obama outlining what he calls the Harper government’s dubious record on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

The government has “gutted 40 years of environmental legislation, gagged scientists, walked away from the Kyoto Protocol and (in McCarthyesque fashion) declared war on environmental groups and charities,” reads a Sierra Club news release.

Oilsands crude is carbon-intensive

Harper is willing to accept targets proposed by the United States for reducing the climate-changing emissions and is prepared to work in concert with Obama to provide whatever political cover he needs to approve the project, sources told the CBC. But the Canadian government has not confirmed that.

The U.S. government insists crude from the oilsands is far more carbon-intensive than other oil used by Americans. Canadian officials parry that the United States emits far more greenhouse gas by burning coal to generate electricity.

The Keystone XL pipeline would cost $7 billion to build but Obama is not likely to decide whether to approve it until 2012 and possibly as late as 2014.

Canada’s energy minister travelled to Washington D.C. today to meet with the U.S. energy secretary to promote Canada as a responsible energy supplier to the U.S.

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