UPDATED - Obama, Harper Push Carbon Procrastination Tech

OTTAWA - U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper today agreed to promote the latest carbon procrastination technology. The agreement on a “clean energy dialogue” would allow the two countries to safely postpone common decisions on climate change – at least until enough people get tired of waiting for real results from carbon sequestration (capture and storage).

In fact, Obama has apparently fallen hard for carbon sequestration vapourware. A highly-placed government source said that under the plan, the U.S. would continue to burn its own coal and import oil from Alberta's tar sands. Harper, Prentice, Stelmach as well as the oil and coal industries would cheer. Meanwhile, Canada and the U.S. would talk about how to create the impression that a technological panacea for the climate mess is just around the corner.

The government source refused to comment on recently-released

“...ministerial briefing notes, initially marked 'Secret,' [which] say that just a small percentage of the carbon dioxide released in mining the [tar] sands and producing fuel from them can be captured.”

UPDATE February 22, 2009: The Harper government has dismissed the briefing notes as being out of date, because they did not take into account the repeal of Murphy's Law. Environment Minister Jim Prentice said:

"Since we repealed that old Liberal legislation, nothing can go wrong with carbon procrastination technology anymore!"

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