Canada Singled Out at Cancun Climate Talks

Environment Minister John Baird is being pressured to soften Canada’s stance on the Kyoto accord.

With time running out to reach an agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, developing countries are pressing Russia, Japan, and Canada to endorse new emissions targets in the framework of the Kyoto accord. The world’s poorer countries say that Kyoto rightly acknowledges the obligations of industrialized nations that are historically responsible for most of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. But Baird’s stance is that Kyoto is unworkable because it is lenient on developing nations and doesn’t bind China or the U.S., the world’s biggest emissions producers, to cut their emissions output. The Cancun conference ends Friday and representatives of the 193 countries participating have warned that failure to reach a deal would be catastrophic.