Meanwhile, In The Arctic...

Photo by Olga Oslina

No sooner is the ink dry on the Durban agree-to-not-agree-until-some-time-in-the-distant-future-when-we-will-agree agreement, than Canada announces that it is pulling out of the Kyoto Agreement.

In truth, that's no surprise. They've done the square root of bugger all to actually deal with their climate emissions. But make no mistake, this decision has nothing to do with not being able to afford to tackle their CO² output. It has everything to do with selling their Tar Sands oil, the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet.

And with spectacular timing, Canada announced their intention to do nothing about climate change on the same day that a team of Russian scientists announced their discovery that methane emissions from the Arctic are, well, fucking huge.

Melting sea ice has exposed the sea floor, where huge structures thousands of metres in diameter are leaking methane like there's no tomorrow. Which there probably won't be unless we tackle climate change and reverse the melting of the sea ice.

I'm sure Canada could probably find the same problem of escaping methane in their melting permafrost, if they bothered to look further than the nearest tar sands pit.