The big news in Bali today was a document out of Ottawa.

The document in question is from the federal government. It outlines the position Canada will take at the UN climate change negotiations in Bali.

The leaked document demands that poorer nations accept the same binding absolute emission reduction targets as developed nations. Canada also wants other countries to recognize that its so-called "national circumstances" entitle it to a weaker target.

This sounds suspiciously like Canada's argument in the past that it deserves weaker targets since it is a major oil and gas producer and exporter (tar sands expansion, here we come!).

If Canada takes this approach here in Bali, it could derail UN climate negotiations during their critical final week. And it will almost certainly guarantee a weaker agreement at the end of the Bali conference.

As soon as this story broke, a bunch of us quickly got together to draft a news release in response.

A key issue is that Canada’s approach violates a fundamental principle of the Kyoto Protocol -- that industrialized countries are largely responsible for causing the problem of climate change and must take the lead in tackling it (see Thursday's blog post).

Canada's lack of credibility was reinforced this week when Rajendra K. Pachauri -- chair of the Nobel-Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- said that the federal government "has been a government of skeptics" that "do not want to do anything on climate change."

We're trying to stay hopeful but things aren't looking very promising right now.