Canada says to the WORLD: Damn the environment; let's get on with polluting in a really big way!!!!

Canada on Monday became the first country to announce it would withdraw from the Kyoto protocol on climate change.


Environment Minister Peter Kent broke the news on his return from talks in Durban, where countries agreed to extend Kyoto for five years and hammer out a new deal forcing all big polluters for the first time to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Canada, a major energy producer which critics complain is becoming a climate renegade.

The right-of-center Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which has close ties to the energy sector.

"It's a national disgrace. Prime Minister Harper just spat in the faces of people around the world for whom climate change is increasingly a life and death issue," said Graham Saul of Climate Action Network Canada.

"Our government is abdicating its international responsibilities. It's like where the kid in school who knows he's going to fail the class, so he drops it before that happens," said Megan Leslie of the opposition New Democrats.

Canada's former Liberal government signed up to Kyoto, which dictated a cut in emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. By 2009 emissions were 17 percent above the 1990 levels, because of the expanding tar sands development.