Most Canadians know that global warming is a problem. They can see the danger of Arctic ice melting, rising oceans, extreme weather, drought, crop failure, food shortages and other calamities. And they’re not impressed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s indifference to the threat.

Earlier this year Canada 2020, a progressive think tank, released an opinion survey that convincingly highlighted the wide gap between public expectations and the Conservative government’s abysmal failure to articulate a credible policy to mitigate the carbon output from our western oilsands and reduce our over-reliance on fossil fuels.

Fully 77 per cent of Canadians are concerned about climate change, the poll found. Even more, 84 per cent, want Ottawa to show international leadership. And 47 per cent would support a carbon tax to deter fossil fuel use — even if it hit them hard in the pocketbook by pushing up energy costs by 10 per cent.

That’s a seam of public support for greening Canada’s image that the Tories could tap into if they weren’t so obsessed with positioning us as a dirty energy superpower by rapidly exploiting the oilsands at the environment’s expense.

But the Harper government isn’t just out-of-step with the public. As the Star’s Mitch Potter reports it is at growing loggerheads with U.S. President Barack Obama’s carbon-cutting administration. In Paris next year the United Nations Climate Summit will try to get agreement on new greenhouse-gas targets for 2020 and the decades beyond. And Obama is already setting out markers that promise to shame the Tories just as they head to the polls seeking re-election.

Obama hopes to persuade the world’s big emitters — led by China, the U.S., India, Russia, Brazil and Japan—to commit to a “politically binding” scheme to further cut emissions, as an alternative to hammering out a new, international treaty. They’d risk being “named and shamed” if they were to promise, and fail to deliver. Under this “voluntary pledge” approach Obama hopes to avoid having to secure the two-thirds support from a balky Congress that is required to ratify a treaty.

Whatever the outcome of Obama’s domestic manoeuvres, Canada already deserves to be “named and shamed” for failing to live up to previous promises. Both Canada and the U.S. agreed in Copenhagen in 2009 to cut greenhouse gases by 17 per cent by 2020 from 2005 levels. Washington is on a credible track to deliver. At Ottawa’s current rate we’d be lucky to get halfway there.

In the coming election campaign Harper will have to either repudiate our Copenhagen pledge, or spell out how he intends to cut back on our fast-rising emissions. He will also be under pressure to spell out his plans for yet more cuts in 2020 and beyond.

There is a path forward. The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have all urged Canada and other major emitters to adopt carbon taxes, manage energy development responsibly with an eye to the environmental cost, phase out subsidies on fossil fuels so as to wean people away from coal, gas and oil, and pump more funds into green energy.

While the Harper government claims to be moving forward, the public is ahead of the Tories on this issue. The voters will be looking for something better.

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