In a recent editorial assault on Canada, oil-sands climate activist extraordinaire James Hansen (NASA) has basically declared war on Canada’s economy (not to mention our own). Hansen wrote:
Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”He goes on to suggest that the U.S. actually take actions against the interests of our neighbors to the north:
President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.
This is truly astonishing: A high ranking official at NASA has taken to the pages of the New York Times to lobby the president of the United States to physically embargo Canada’s oil and impose economic sanctions against Canada to force them to eschew tar-sand development and export.
As Bruce Carson, executive director of the Canada School of Energy and the Environment points out in the journal Policy Options, that would be unbearably painful for Canada:
If it didn’t involve CO2, such a federal employee would be given a brief lecture on exactly who enunciates US foreign policy and sent packing.