As most of the political spotlight is on the presidential election in USA you might have missed the election in Canada last week. Unfortunately not much changed there. Stephen Harper and his Conservative party remained in power, the Liberals lost 19 seats and the Greens failed to even win a seat.

The outcome of the election was a blow to the environment and anyone who wants tough actions against climate change. Mitchell Anderson, from the DeSmogBlog, said that “the Canadian election saw little talk of dealing with climate change since stock markets tanked in the final week of the campaign.”

“Newly elected Prime Minister Stephen Harper successfully campaigned on a pro-carbon platform of making burning fossil fuels even cheaper. While carbon taxes ore old hat elsewhere in the world, here in Canada Harper managed to portray the idea as “crazy”, “insane”, and something that would “screw everyone across the country” and “wreck” the economy.”

Anderson continued by saying that “Canada under Stephen Harper will have a far less credible climate policy than virtually any developed country in the world”. He also pointed out that “John McCain is calling for far more stringent carbon cuts than Canada under Harper.”

The Greens in Canada, led by Elizabeth May, failed to win a seat, but their election outcome was still seen as a victory as they managed to raise their share of the popular vote.

“[We] grabbed national attention,” Ms May told supporters, “not because we were tilting at windmills, but because we set out to do something right and we set out to do it for the right reasons.”