Harper goes to Washington

So today is the big day that our Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be heading down to the White House for a chat with U.S. President Barack Obama - one of the critical discussion points (if they get to it, considering they only have maybe 40 minutes or so) is on energy, and in particular the tar sands oil production.

Harper is expected to seek a number of U.S. actions that would promote the expansion of the oil sands production, which would lead indirectly to significant increases in Canadian and American emissions of greenhouse gases, such as:

• Approval of permits for more pipelines to bring tar-sands bitumen to U.S. refineries and access to U.S. natural gas to fuel tar sands extraction
• Abandonment of U.S. legal requirements to account for the full life-cycle of carbon emissions of fuel
• Joint cooperation on applying carbon capture and storage (CCS) to tar sands

There is no doubt that Harper could argue that the oil sands as a source of fuel will contribute to U.S. energy security. But then again, this seems like the briefest of meetings between the two leaders - with Harper handling election threats in Canada and Obama preoccupied with his country's health care reform, I doubt we'll even get as far as an acknowledgment of the problem of climate change.