OTTAWA - Canada must stand with the world's leading countries in the fight against climate change and object the U.S. government's efforts to thwart a global action plan on carbon emissions, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said in an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Saturday.
"I am writing to urge you to recognize the moral imperative of urgent action, to seize the mantle of international leadership, and to speak out forcefully against the United States' efforts to dilute the global action plan,'' said Dion.
The letter followed warnings by American environmentalists who said the United States was preparing to reject new targets on climate change expected to be discussed at a Group of Eight summit next month in Germany.
James Turner, a Greenpeace spokesman, said the group had received leaked government documents that suggest the White House has major reservations about the proposed targets.
"I am deeply troubled by Canada's silence in the face of reports that U.S. President George Bush is seeking to weaken the proposed G-8 Declaration on Climate Change and Energy Efficiency,'' Dion wrote in the letter.
"Your government should not continue to approach this challenge as merely a domestic partisan political issue,'' said Dion.
The United States, the world's biggest polluter, did not ratify the Kyoto agreement through which developed countries agreed to cut emissions by five per cent below their 1990 level by 2012.
Under Kyoto, Canada agreed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below their 1990 level by 2008.
Emissions have risen instead by 35 per cent.
The Conservative government has warned that meeting the Kyoto Protocol's reduction targets would plunge Canada into the worst recession since the Second World War, with soaring unemployment and skyrocketing electricity and gas bills.
Harper's government has instead come up with a new plan to reduce greenhouse gases.
The plan introduces regulations that would apply to all sectors and industries, including a promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent over 2006 levels by 2020.
Big emitters will face a 26 per cent reduction by 2015 with targets based on production levels.
Reductions of smog-producing emissions like sulphur oxide require a 55 per cent cut within eight years.
A United Nations report on climate change released earlier this month concluded that greenhouse gas emissions can be slashed in half by 2050 at a cost of only 0.12 per cent of the world's annual economic output.
