by Ben Block

Photo courtesy USFWS

The Canadian government didn’t win many fans at December’s Copenhagen climate summit. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s administration staunchly opposed further emissions restrictions on his country, despite Canada’s failure to meet its Kyoto Protocol commitment of cutting fossil fuel emissions 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008–12. Instead, domestic emissions escalated further.

Canada’s new target of reducing emissions 3 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 51–63 percent by 2050 is insufficient to prevent climate change from permanently altering the country’s northern backyard. Last week, the Arctic Council announced in its Arctic Species Trend Index, which the Canadian government funded, that High Arctic vertebrate species declined 26 percent between 1970 and 2004. Populations in more southern and marine Arctic ecosystems have experienced less dramatic changes, but climate change is clearly threatening the survival of polar wildlife, including in Canada. Arctic species are expected to be displaced as more southerly species encroach into warmer northern habitats, and polar ice melt threatens to further shrink Arctic habitats.

Harper’s administration seems increasingly uncommitted to supporting climate science. Its 2010 budget withholds funds to the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, a move that may reduce university-based climate science research by half, according to Climate Action Network (CAN) Canada. Government climate experts have been discouraged from speaking directly with the news media. And perhaps most disturbing,