By Redmond Weissenberger

On Tuesday November 17th, a little sanity came to the Parliament of Canada. The Canadian Senate killed the NDP sponsored Bill C-311, “The Climate Change Accountability Act.”

Introduced on February 9th, 2009 the bill was subtitled, “An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change.” This was, of course, before Climate-gate, before Glacier-gate, before the Canadian IPCC Citizens Audit showed that fully 1/3 of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report’s references were not peer-reviewed, and before the Copenhagen Climate Conference failed amid statements like the one from the head of the G77 Group, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, who said, “[The draft text] asks Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries. It is a solution based on values, the very same values in our opinion that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces.”

Yes, it is a whole new world when it comes to the “Climate Debate” and the Canadian Senate has reflected this sea change by striking down a bill that in the words of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, “sets irresponsible targets, does not lay out any measure of achieving them, other than by shutting down sections of the Canadian economy and throwing hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people out of work.”

In the middle of the greatest world economic crisis since the 1930’s, the bill would have committed the families of Canada to the following: “The Government of Canada shall ensure that Canadian greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, subject to the ultimate objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, (a) as a long-term target, to a level that is 80% below the 1990 level by the year 2050.”

Of course the last time that Canada as a nation emitted 80% below 1990 levels was in the 19th century, and that with Brazil, Russia, India and China looking to be the new global economic leaders and dead set against hampering their economies with arbitrary constraints on their carbon emissions, Canada, a country with 30 million people and 1.9% of global carbon emissions would be experiencing all pain and no gain for turning off the key to our success in providing a first world standard of living to our citizens – the use of plentiful, efficient, and clean fossil fuels.

So let’s thank the Canadian Senate, for killing this “Carbon” bill, and for bringing some sanity to our energy policy.