In a recent article on CBC’s website, political commentator Scott Reid wrote that I don’t “give a damn” about the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico.

Reid, who was former prime minister Paul Martin’s communications director, is correct that I was “fed up and had little time for Cancun, assuming the political will to respond to the pressing threat of climate change at this forum was all but nil.”

But there’s nothing that concerns me more than the threat of climate change and the necessity of world leaders to deal with the crisis. I’ve just seen the futility of trying to get our current government to act in any meaningful way at the UN talks, and I agree with David Suzuki Foundation staff that our efforts are better placed elsewhere.

In the lead-up to last year’s climate summit in Copenhagen, we rallied more than 14,300 Canadians to send letters and cards, make telephone calls and post videos online to demand that the federal government take action on climate change. Although it was great to see that support, it didn’t budge the government. World leaders failed to deliver the fair, ambitious and binding agreement we need to fight global warming, and Canada was seen as obstructing progress at the talks.

Canada’s record since hasn’t increased our hope. Our government has made “law and order” one of its platforms, yet it ignores that the Kyoto Protocol, which Canada signed, is international law. And last month, the government used the unelected Senate to kill, without debate, the Climate Change Accountability Act that the elected House of Commons had passed.

Worse perhaps, we recently learned that Canada’s government teamed up with the oil industry to secretly lobby against climate policies around the world, including California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, even though the government’s own bureaucrats reported that the California policy would “have a negligible impact on the Canadian oil industry” and that it is consistent with Canada’s goals.

It wasn’t the first time the government ignored its top officials to help the oil industry. In September 2009, leaders of G20 nations, including Canada, agreed at the Pittsburgh G20 summit to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. A leaked document from Canada’s Department of Finance later spelled out two approaches for meeting this commitment. The first was to “take action toward an immediate phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies.” The second was to “minimize the obligation.” Canada went against the advice of top officials and the environment minister and chose the latter.

The upshot? Our government — or rather, Canadian taxpayers — now subsidize the oil and gas industry to the tune of $1.4 billion a year, $840 million in the form of special tax breaks.

As for Cancun, just as UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chair Rajendra Pachauri was telling the world that more research is needed into the release of potent greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as Arctic ice and permafrost melt, the 10-year-old Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences was winding down its operations after the government cut its funding.

And from Day 1 at Cancun, Canada’s Jurassic reputation has continued to grow. On opening day, our country took all three “fossil of the day” awards at the UN climate change negotiations. The dubious awards were given by environmental organizations to Canada for using the unelected Senate to kill the Climate Change Accountability Act, gutting climate change programs, and making the least constructive contribution to the negotiations.

What can you do about a government that fails to live up to its international obligations and that cares more about protecting and subsidizing the wealthiest industry in history than about protecting its own citizens from the impacts of pollution and climate change?

International negotiations are crucial, and through our alliance with organizations such as the Climate Action Network, we will continue to support efforts to get a fair, ambitious and binding international agreement on climate change. We hope that the current talks will at least form the basis for movement at next year’s negotiations in South Africa.

In Canada, though, we can accomplish more by working with municipal and provincial governments, and with thousands of concerned citizens, than trying to get the federal government to act on global warming. Our work around clean-energy solutions and other ways to resolve climate issues — and help steer Canada toward the emerging clean-energy economy — is more in line with initiatives such as Ontario’s plan to phase out coal power and create incentives to attract clean-energy technologies, B.C.’s implementation of a carbon tax that increases over time, and the City of Vancouver’s bold Greenest City initiative.

Of course, that’s not enough to confront a global problem like climate change, but if leadership is lacking at the top, we must build from the ground up.

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I do give a damn about the UN climate talks. I only wish our government did.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Ian Hanington, editorial and communications specialist at the David Suzuki Foundation, also contributed to this article.

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