[Hello from snowy and cold Copenhagen. Tensions have ramped up as political leaders arrived but are mainly meeting in secret.

Ashamed to say Canada is a widely acknowledged as a public embarrassment here. And called a climate criminal by some. Several protests like the one I covered below and a smaller one earlier have focused on the Athabasca Tar Sands perhaps the world’s biggest source of carbon emissions.

Outside the artificial reality of the Bella Center ordinary people get it. Here is good video summary of what happened on Wed as civil society were gradually banned from the conference. It accords with my son’s version who was in the middle of all this as an observer. — Steve]

By Stephen Leahy

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) Dec 14 2009

Climate activists jammed a small square near the police-barricaded Canadian Embassy here Monday for the second day of protests over the country’s tar sands development.

Simultaneous protests were held at the Canadian Embassy in London because British oil companies and financial institutions are deeply invested in the Canadian mega-project.

“As indigenous people, we are here at the international climate negotiations to speak about threats to our cultural survival and the direct life-threatening impacts of climate change in our communities,” said Clayton Thomas Muller, tar sands campaigner for the Indigenous Environmental Network.

“Canada has been blocking the climate negotiations and hasn’t kept Kyoto commitments…because of the tar sands,” he told a crowd of 75 to 100 people surrounded by four squads of riot police.

Boreal forests and wetlands the size of Greece are been destroyed in northern Alberta in an industrial project that turns millions of tonnes of sand and earth into oil, mainly for the U.S. market he said.

“All the efforts by Canadians to reduce their carbon emissions are undone by the tar sands,” said Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein.

The tar sands are Canada’s largest single source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and the major reason why Canada has refused to live up to its commitments to reduce emissions and is blocking negotiations, Klein told protesters.

“Canada is making a mockery of international law and of developing countries’ need for urgent emission reductions in rich countries,” she said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is here at the Dec. 7-18 U.N.-sponsored climate summit under false pretences, Klein charged.

“Harper does not have the Canadian people’s permission to promote the tar sands or to favour Canadian interests over those of the planet,” she said.

The tar sands are “Canada’s Mordor”, said Maude Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians, the largest citizens’ group in Canada. She was referring to the devastated land of rock and fire in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

“What else can you call a project that leaks 11 million litres of toxic waste a day into rivers and groundwater?” Barlow said in this very un-Mordor upscale shopping district of downtown Copenhagen.

The tar sands project has the largest toxic waste containment ponds on the planet – easily visible from space. Last week, a report revealed the extent of the leaks to be an estimated 11 million litres a day.

Shockingly, this is based on the oil companies’ own self-reported data, says Environmental Defence, the Canadian advocacy, research and education group that compiled the report.

It calculated that four billion litres of leakage a year will grow to 25 billion in a decade based on current growth of the tar sands and aging of the enormous dams that hold back the waste.

“There is no question Harper will stand up for  the oil sector [in the climate talks here],” Barlow said.

“Their [oil industry] footprints are all over this negotiation and that is why it will fail.”

-30-

Corrected 2/2/12

For more on the Tar Sands see:

Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest: The Environmental Cost of Canada’s Oil Sands – Revised V2.1Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest: The Environmental Cost of Canada’s Oil Sands – Revised V2.1