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It’s high time to stop indulging that charade. We now have example after example of climate change activists declaring publicly that nothing Canada does to reduce our domestic CO2 emissions will change their resolute opposition to new export pipelines.

This was shockingly clear in an interview that CBC’s Power and Politics did with the American anti-oil activist Bill McKibbon the evening that Nebraska approved a routing for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. McKibbon is the founder of 350.org, one of largest and best funded climate change interest groups in the U.S.

Every Canadian should see thisinterview for themselves, but here is a summary of the key exchanges:

Interviewer: What common ground might you be able to find with the Alberta government?

McKibbon: At this point, a common ground can’t be found… The only thing we can do is keep as much carbon in the ground as possible… Canada, a rich country, needs to keep that carbon safely underground…

Interviewer: So you don’t give this government any credit (for its climate change policies)?

McKibbon: Oh, I think they are doing a good job on the demand side… but there aren’t enough Canadians for that to be a very big deal. The big deal is the huge pool of carbon that sits underneath Alberta, and that will dwarf whatever it is that Canada does with its own domestic emissions.

It’s not just the McKibbons of the world that are stating the obvious fact that, at two per cent of global emissions, what Canada does to reduce our domestic emissions is irrelevant to what happens globally. We are too small to matter. Our own homegrown McKibbon — David Suzuki — bluntly said the same thing recently. Delivering a speech at a Calgary’s teachers convention, Suzuki declared: “I’m sorry Alberta, but we have to keep that fuel in the ground… The tar sands have to be shut down… No more infrastructure getting that stuff out — that means rails, pipelines, shipping. There’s no point in investing in infrastructure when they’re all going to be shut down.”