The Globe and Mail

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is proposing to strike a joint climate-change pact with president-elect Barack Obama, an initiative that would seek to protect Alberta’s oil sands projects from potentially tough new U.S. climate-change rules by offering a secure North American energy supply.

Key federal ministers issued the call for a climate-change pact Wednesday, less than 24 hours after Mr. Obama won his historic election victory, in a clear bid by Ottawa to carve out a key place for Canada on the new administration’s agenda.

Telegraph

Mr Obama selected Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and Carol Browner, a confidante of former Vice President Al Gore, to lead a White House council on energy and climate.

Dr Chu, 60, is director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, and is a leading advocate of reducing greenhouse gases by developing new energy sources .

The Toronto Star

Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice addressed the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan yesterday, calling for a reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time ensuring economic growth and sustainable development.

“Canada like the rest of the world worries about the health of our planet, and we already living with the impacts of climate change,” Prentice told the crowded room of international delegates last night.

The Wall Street Journal

If President Barack Obama wants to stop the descent toward dangerous global climate change, and avoid the trade anarchy that current approaches to this problem will invite, he should take Al Gore’s proposal for a carbon tax and make it global. A tax on CO2 emissions - not a cap-and-trade system - offers the best prospect of meaningfully engaging China and the U.S., while avoiding the prospect of unhinged environmental protectionism.

The Seattle Times

Unless the United States radically reduces its greenhouse-gas emissions, along with other major emitters, the damage to the climate will be irreversible.

UTIL POINT

An overview of some of the problems impeding the success of America in adopting a “green” sensibility to its policies and practices.