Alberta is looking for a free ride on the backs of other nations before it agrees to the Kyoto accord, activist speakers at the G-6B People's Summit said yesterday.
And because the G-8 summit is being held in Alberta, there isn't much hope among G-6B -- Group of Six Billion -- conference delegates the accord will be discussed during meetings later this week.
Steven Guilbeault, representative of Greenpeace, said the Canadian government expects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without suffering any economic hardships.
Guilbeault said he is appalled with Canadian leaders' expectations the world owes them another break for importing clean energy to the U.S.
"We should not be getting any extra credits," he said.
He said Canada needs to agree to the Kyoto accord to ensure the health of its people.
Gordon Laird, author of a book about energy and climate changes called Power, agrees with Guilbeault.
"Why Canada and the United States, or some different parts of these countries, are resisting some things like Kyoto is that they are so much an energy economy model based on inefficiency," said Laird, who grew up in Alberta.
"The waste-driven economy has so much of a political force."
Laird said Canada is stuck in the 19th century because it is an empire built on vast quantities of cheap energy.
"It is very telling that the Alberta solution to an expected power crunch is to build new coal plants," he said.
Meanwhile, the current economic development model for Africa is a failure, an activist from Kenya told a G-6B conference audience.
Njoki Njehu, now a U.S. resident, said it's unacceptable that three billion people in the world live on less than $1 a day.
And Njehu said she doesn't expect the visiting group of world leaders to make decisions this week that will dramatically change the plight of the average African.
"If the G-7 dealt with (Africa's) debt effectively, then their house of cards would come down. They aren't interested in doing that."
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