The President will make his first foreign visit to Canada next week. This is a tradition and historically these meetings have been largely ceremonial.

Not so this time. Canada is abuzz with speculation about what directions might be set - particularly on energy policy.  The President and Prime Minister agreed that energy and the environment will be top tier issues, along with Afganistan and trade issues. Therefore, it is likely to be the first international forum in which the President addresses climate change, and the world will be watching closely.

But there is a fly in the "tarry" ointment, so to speak. The Prime Minister is pushing "protections" for oil derived from the tar sands.  This oil is literally scraped out of pristine forest and, by using huge amounts of energy and water, turned into a very heavy crude oil. It's production, topping 1.5 million barrels per day, comes at a terrible ecological and social cost to Alberta's Boreal forest. The Canadian Boreal forest is one of the world's last large intact ecosystems, our largest terrestrial carbon reservoir, and nursery to one third of our backyard birds and waterfowl. It is also the home to native communities that have lived in peace with the land for thousands of years.

With the leadership of President Obama, America is now looking beyond these extractive and energy intensive fuels to a clean energy future.  In this future, more stock is put in renewable energy such as wind and solar and far less in the fossil fuels of the past.  The stimulus bill approved by the House and Senate last night has record investments in renewables and in energy efficiency.

But change is hard and old ideas persist.  This week, I heard Matt Miller of the Center for American Progress speak about his new book "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas". He describes our greatest challenge as being stuck in an old way of thinking.  Andrew Revkin, a journalist from the New York Times, made similar comments saying recently that while global warming frightened him, more frightening is our inability to process the scale of the threat and to act decisively to protect ourselves. 

Dead ideas seem to be a major driver in the tar sands. Instead of moving away from extractive, damaging practices of the past, we carry on because we seem almost unable to break away from them.

But next week, when President Obama travels to Canada, there is a chance for some new thinking. And here are some ways our leaders might want to start:

1) Set out a path for a new energy economy: This new economy would provide green jobs and environmentally sustainable energy solutions such as wind, solar power, and low carbon fuels. Already the Provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, and Ontario are working with Governor Schwarzenegger's Western Climate Initiative to put low carbon fuel standards in place. More collaboration along these lines would be terrific.

2) Agree that there is no such thing as energy security that conflicts with climate security:  James Jones, our National Security Advisor, said this week at a major security conference, that our overdependence on fossil fuels endangers our security, our economies, and the health of the planet.

 A recent CSIS/WRI study makes the case that there is no room for high carbon fuels in a future that provides climate security.

3) Endorse a framework for action that sharply reduces our global warming pollution through absolute targets:  President Obama is proposing that the U.S. adopt a cap on global warming pollution that requires sharp reductions from all emitting sectors.  No sector is exempted, including coal. Trading in emissions reductions is allowed, along with some offsets, but there will be tremendous pressure to move to less emitting, low carbon alternatives for generating energy and for our transportation.  To date, Canada has not adopted or proposed such a national cap.

Sadly, for Canada, the tar sands stand in the way. The economic interest in exploiting tar sands is driving a very weak Canadian federal policy on climate change.  While many of these tar sands projects are coming to a halt due to the economy and price of oil, the Canadian government seems irrevocably captured by them.  The tar sands are Canada's largest growing source of global warming pollution. On the U.S. side, importing tar sands oil also produces higher emissions at U.S. refineries, compared to refining conventional petroleum.  The solution to both challenges is to reduce oil use by improving vehicle efficiency, producing clean alternative fuels, and improving public transportation.  But first we need to break from our old ideas.

So when our leaders gather to discuss these issues next week, we should be on the lookout for technological fixes that keep old thinking alive.  One of those is carbon capture and sequestration. While CCS, as it is known, may have greater promise in other applications, it is unlikely to deliver the "silver bullet" to fix the tar sands global warming pollution.  And it won't clean up the other problems of air, water and land degradation. It is better to spend the billions on new technologies that don't have the huge downsides of strip mining and drilling for tar sands oil. Alberta has some of the greatest potential for wind power generation but it will take changing the mindset and political system that follows that in Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton.

We cannot afford to get this wrong, for the climate, for biodiversity and maybe most importantly for ourselves. We need to know that we can move from dead ideas to a future that is more inspiring and more in sinc with nature. 

This is where I want our new President to lead us next week. And I think most Canadians feel the same.