UNITED NATIONS—The Conservative government pushed back at critics and declared Canada a “global clean energy leader” doing “its part” to cut carbon emissions that warm the earth.

It was a defiant message accompanied by a promise of more unspecified action to reduce another kind of greenhouse gas.

Conservative environment minister Leona Aglukkaq told the UN’s climate change summit Tuesday Ottawa will “take further action” to cut the use of hydroflurocarbons, or HFCs.

She offered no specifics on what that would entail. The government has been progressively regulating HFCs, which Canada and the U.S. identified Tuesday as the fastest growing GHG (greenhouse gas) in the world, increasing at a rate of 10 to 15 per cent per year.

“These are particularly potent and damaging greenhouse gases and Canada is proud to take this decisive action,” said Aglukkaq.

HFCs are factory-made gases that are used in refrigeration and air conditioning, foam insulation and other sectors. Once thought to be a safer alternative to chloroflurocarbons or CFCs, HFCs became the fastest-growing greenhouse gases in much of the world after CFCs were dramatically slashed under a 2006 Montreal Protocol, led by then Liberal-minister Stéphane Dion.

That protocol is hailed for successfully reducing the use of ozone depleting substances.

However, U.S. President Barack Obama signalled much more progress could be made, noting he’d convened private sector leaders who agreed to “do their part to slash consumption of dangerous greenhouse gases known as HFCs — slash them 80 per cent by 2050.”

Obama said he’d raised HFCs with Chinese vice-premier Zhang Gaoli and “reiterated my belief that as the two largest economies and emitters in the world, we have a special responsibility to lead. That’s what big nations have to do.”

Aglukkaq echoed a similar message in her speech — that all countries had to step up.

She boasted Canada has taken a “a strategic and pragmatic” approach to reducing other greenhouse gas emissions on a sector-by-sector basis, and is leading the world in “clean energy.”

She listed actions taken to date, including regulating the transportation and coal-fired electricity-generating sectors, saying it “further cements Canada’s place as a global clean energy leader as we have one of the cleanest energy mixes in the world, with more than three-quarters of our electricity supply emitting no greenhouse gases.”

The U.S. has also moved to regulate coal-fired plants, both new and existing units — a move environmental activists like Environmental Defence Canada say has more impact as the U.S. relies much more heavily on coal to generate electricity.

Obama said Monday its plan has set the U.S. on track to meet its Copenhagen goal of reducing emissions by 17 per cent in 2020 from 2005 levels.

Canada cannot say the same.

In fact, Aglukkaq did not specify where Canada is on the path to meeting the same target — a target most environmentalists say Ottawa will fail to meet.

Earlier Tuesday, Aglukkaq did rare one-on-one interviews with a handful of Canadian media outlets.

Pressed to say when Canada will move to regulate its largest industrial emitters in the oil and gas sector, the environment minister said the Conservative government continues to work with the U.S. administration on workable solutions.

“These things don’t happen overnight,” Aglukkaq told CTV National News

Instead, she brought to the UN the same message Prime Minister Stephen Harper always brings to international meetings — that no climate change deal will work without the world’s biggest emitters signing on to it.

The next international negotiations to put in place a post-Kyoto framework for global action to fight climate change will be held in Paris in 2015.

Aglukkaq said she is “confident we can achieve a final agreement, but it will require courage and common sense. And it is crucial any new agreement contain commitments from all major economies and major emitters.”

The Canadian message stood in contrast to a rallying call by Obama to all countries to move beyond rhetoric to deal with what he called the “issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate.”

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“In each of our countries, there are interests that will be resistant to action. And in each country, there is a suspicion that if we act and other countries don’t, that we will be at an economic disadvantage. But we have to lead,” he said in his address earlier Tuesday.

Harper didn’t speak at the climate change summit, sending Aglukkaq to speak in his place at the climate change summit convened by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

Harper was to dine with about two dozen leaders Tuesday evening at an gathering hosted by the secretary general.

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