so embarassing

I sure hope that the Canadian media is plastered with news today and tomorrow about what the Canadian government just did here.

They were holding a side event called "Turning the Corner: Canada's Approach to Climate Change". Instead of having government officials present information, they had industry representatives from alternative energy companies do presentations (and these gentlemen were only asked last week to do these presentations, they told me in person). Those presentations were good but they also highlighted the fact that the Canadian government has been investing in their technologies for 20 or 30 years (no corner turning yet). Environment Minister John Baird was supposed to follow this up with a presentation, and he was at the meeting, but he decided to cut out with a bogus excuse (there are no negotiations going on tonight so there was nowhere else more important for him to be than the side event planned by our government for months). After about 2 questions to the industry guys, half of the room got up and left in disgust. There was absolutely no mention of Canada's "new" climate change plan and no indication of any change. I felt really bad for the industry guys because the government hung them out to dry and made them look like fools up there. So I went up to them afterwards to apologize on behalf of everyone leaving and made sure that they knew that it wasn't about them (they really were doing some interesting things).

live from Bali

Mark