VIDEO: Conservative climate change credibility disappearing at alarming rate

After the release of a devastating environmental audit on Tuesday from a federal watchdog, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq tapped her parliamentary assistant, Colin Carrie, to deal with the media.

Poor guy.

The audit of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development found, among other things:

• The government has no specific plan to meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction target — meaning that Canada won’t come close to meeting its Copenhagen Accord target to cut emissions to 17% below 2005 level by 2020; this watered down target was established in 2009 after the government withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol.
• Eight years ago, the government promised to introduce regulations to limit emissions from the oil and gas sector, the fastest growing emitter, but has yet to do so (although apparently draft regulations exist but have not yet been released to the public). This means that by 2020, greenhouse gas production in the sector is estimated to be 27 megatonnes higher than it was in 2012. In other words, the government’s touted “sector-by-sector” approach has been a failure.
• The federal government doesn’t know what Environment Canada’s monitoring role will be after March 2015 under the Canada-Alberta Joint Oil Sands Monitoring program.

Now watch environment watchdog Julie Gelfand talk about the audit and Carrie’s response:

Photo: YouTube and PMwebphotos. Used under a Creative Commons BY-2.0 licence.