Canada First Nation To Pull Out of Kyoto Accord 561
Hugh Pickens writes "Canada will become the first country to formally withdraw from the Kyoto protocol on climate change, dealing a symbolic blow to the troubled global treaty. 'Kyoto, for Canada, is in the past,' says Environment Minister Peter Kent. 'We are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto.' Kent, a Conservative, says the Liberals should not have signed up to a treaty they had no intention of respecting and says Ottawa backs a new global deal to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, but insists it has to cover all nations, including China and India, which are not bound by Kyoto's current targets. Kent adds that meeting Canada's obligations under Kyoto would cost $13.6 billion: 'That's $1,600 from every Canadian family — that's the Kyoto cost to Canadians, that was the legacy of an incompetent liberal government.' Kent's announcement came just hours after negotiators in Durban managed to thrash out an agreement at the very last minute — an agreement to begin a new round of talks on a new agreement in the years ahead. 'Staying under 2C will require drastic, immediate action — with global emissions peaking in the next five years or so,' writes Brad Plummer. 'The Durban Platform, by contrast, merely prods countries to come up with a new agreement that will go into effect no later than 2020.'"
wrong crowd, UN? (Score:1, Insightful)
Please,
stop sending politicians to fix a real problem. Send scientists and others.
If we can agree to put severe sanctions on some countries because a few nations like to be the only boys with toys. ...
Then surely we should be able to put minor 'green' sanctions on nations that ruin our planet and the environment of all nations on this planet?
What such a sanction could be? No more trade/import/export of 'polluting' substances with said nation. Coal, oil,
If they don't want to be clean, we can at least try to prevent them from getting/exporting the stuff they need for being dirty.
Not gonna matter anyway (Score:1, Insightful)
Whether GW is real or a farce is really immaterial. We know that the Earth, as a matter of its *natural* cycle, goes through periods of warming and cooling. There's no stopping it, and it doesn't matter whether we're the cause or simply incidental. Trying to stop nature from doing what it does is, at best, a recipe for disaster.
The key is to learn to ADAPT to the changing climate, not try to exercise control we don't and can't have.
If they're not doing it, we're not doing it. (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't see the validity in an argument justifying Western emissions based on the emissions of developing nations. Just because they're not doing their bit, doesn't mean we shouldn't do ours.
Good, hair shirts won't save us (Score:5, Insightful)
We're trying to tell the teeming masses in India and China that they can't aspire to have luxuries like refrigerators, washing machines and cars. Quite rightly, they don't give a damn about our rank hypocrisy.
Even if every decadent Western nation beggars itself (and we won't) then India and China will pick up the emissions slack within a decade or so (and they will anyway).
Emissions restrictions are dead in the water on the global scale. Instead, how about we start from the premise that people are going to strive to live rich, comfortable, high energy lives, and that they're going to keep having lots of kids who will expect to have more than their parents had.
There are essentially two solutions: cull about 4 billion people, or throw resources at clean power until it sticks, and I mean trillion dollar tranches of funding at fusion.
tl;dr version - emissions will go down when it's cheaper to produce green energy than to burn coal, and not one moment before.
Re:If they're not doing it, we're not doing it. (Score:1, Insightful)
Because it's a cost to that nation's economy and therefore makes participating nations (assuming they actually attempted to hit their goals) less competitive than those countries that aren't participating. When you raise the cost of doing business in your nation, you slow growth.
Re:Good, hair shirts won't save us (Score:5, Insightful)
When the food supply drops so that the planet can only support one billion, the population will fall to one billion. The question is, which billion?
I doubt the sifting process will be pleasant.
Re:If they're not doing it, we're not doing it. (Score:5, Insightful)
There must be something to gain from research into greener ways of doing business.
I work in the maritime industry and green initiatives are working hand in hand with rising oil prices to make fuel and hull efficiency a source of great savings for owners and operators. This is driven by research and engineering in areas like CO2 scrubbers, hull coatings and simple things like using energy efficient lighting.
Sure, burning less fuel might put less money back into the pockets of oil companies, but there's got to be a better future at the end of this road than burning dwindling supplies of heavy fuel by the millions of tons and smogging up the place.
Re:We could learn a thing or two.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want the US to make reparations payments for our global hegemony, just call it that, and stop pretending that you're doing it for other reasons, then.
I hate fucking bullshit like this.
problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that we need people who think long-term to solve this. But none of the people in power do.
In the west, politicians think roughly until the next election and that's it.
The 3rd world countries either don't care or are so unstable that anything that hurts now in order to get a big pay-off tomorrow means the end of the current regime.
And China, India, Brazil, etc. are growing so fast that pretty much the same holds true, except that it's because of the growth dynamics and not political instability.
So basically, we're heading for the wall. We know it. Nobody dares to grab the wheel because it means unbuckling your seat belt.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good, hair shirts won't save us (Score:2, Insightful)
tl;dr version - emissions will go down when it's cheaper to produce green energy than to burn coal, and not one moment before.
Two words: Carbon tax. Oh, did I say the dreaded "T" word? Please beat me senseless now, Mr. Norquist.
Re:We could learn a thing or two.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is easy to promise that later presidents or governments will do something, then do nothing except watch the divide between the emissions and the emissions target grow larger every day. What mythical president is it that will slash emissions by 20% + whatever increase there has been between 2005 and whatever year the reductions will start? If we can't start now, what makes anyone think we can start later, when the costs will be even greater?
Note that China has not even promised to reduce its total emissions. As long as its GDP is growing by double digits every year, reducing the intensity of the emissions even with 80% won't reduce their total emissions by 2020.
And meanwhile the scientists are debating whether we are passing the threshold of catastrophic changes the next few years, or if we already have passed it.
We are so screwed.
Re:If they're not doing it, we're not doing it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately... (Score:2, Insightful)
... the western economic model is a giant ponzi scheme based on getting people to buy more and more crap they don't need - ie growth. One day its going to collapse - badly - but the head in the sand economists just don't want to know.
First Nation (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I the only one who initially read the headline to mean that one of the Canadian First Nations (i.e. what USers call Native American tribes) had pulled out of the Kyoto Accord, and wondered when they became recognized for international relations?
Dear Harper (Score:4, Insightful)
Dear Stephen Harper:
Fuck you.
You've obviously decided my family (and every family in Canada) can afford the $3,800 we're putting toward the new F-35s [flightglobal.com]. But thank you, thank you, for saving me the money that would be wasted doing my part for the world.
Re:We could learn a thing or two.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be more accurate to measure output per capita rather than per country? From a rough estimate that puts the US and Canada neck and neck at about 2.5x the per capita output of China.
Re:If they're not doing it, we're not doing it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Like China would give a shit. 1.3 billion people right there.
Like India would give a shit either, 1.2 billion people right there.
It's not as if they couldn't run their own macroeconomy independent and isolated from the rest of the World. They surely could with one third of the population between them. In fact, they could say to the rest of the world, "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on" and let the rest of us starve.
Re:Good, hair shirts won't save us (Score:5, Insightful)
India and China will develop anyway. It's not like they don't have enough consumers, and it's not like all the knowledge and information required is not available to them. Ultimately, the only competition between India/China and the west is for natural resources. The west has been able to grab a large proportion of the world's natural resources because the west is much better at producing things - cars, aeroplanes, chemicals, drugs, software, services - which it can swap for them. (And as soon as India and China become as good at that resource prices will be enormously higher).
As The Economist pointed out recently, large numbers of people die in heatwaves in India but few in Texas. The differences is air conditioning. It's difficult to tell Indians they aren't allowed to have it. I would go on to say that it'll ultimately be politically impossible for the west to argue that everyone else is allowed a lower limit on emissions per person. China's emissions are approaching European levels, but India's are much lower and they're both a long long way from US levels (and, given self interest, it'll obviously be the US they'll compare themselves to). Reducing western levels of emissions to contemporary Chinese levels, especially in the US, is a political precondition to getting any action from China and India. And, of course, the same technology can be used there.
BTW, IIRC China have claimed to have done more than anyone else to reduce their CO2 emissions - via their one-child policy. I can't remember where or when, but whether they have or not they'd have a point.
Re:Good, hair shirts won't save us (Score:2, Insightful)
The Council on Foreign Relations are already talking about reducing the population with a cull (JFGI).
Bill Gates said while guest speaker at some meeting or other that the population of the World would comfortably lie at around 300 million (JFGI).
The UK Government are calling a cull of the local population to "manageable" levels - we're talking around 3 million. Fifty eight million British people are going to have to die for this to occur.
There is a lot to be said for paranoia. I refuse to have flu shots (mercury, live viruses, etc). I don't drink the water (fish fuck in it).
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
He's the Environment Minister. Official part of the "Harper Government"(tm).
Yes, it's an embarrassing time to be a Canadian. There used to be a time when we would take part in multinational initiatives and act as a positive mediator who helped countries reach consensus. Now we sabotage them.
You mean "pretend to take part in multinational initiatives". The government that signed the stupid agreement in the first place didn't do much of anything to actually bring down our carbon emissions.
Re:Dear Harper (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to second the "Fuck you.", and also throw in the absurd "crime bill" that comes at a time when crime rates are their lowest in decades, and is still being pushed through, despite Texas Republicans writing an open letter saying, paraphrased, "that shit don't work".
Fuck Harper, and the Conservatives. A majority with less than 40% of the popular vote? Maybe you should worry about pissing off the Canadian public just a little too much.
Kyoto (Score:0, Insightful)
One can only hope the rest of the world also realizes this is a Global Scam and recognizes that the proper place for resources to be directed is the reduction of pollution. Co2 is an essential life giving gas, colorless, odorless, non polluting and without it - no plants - no plants - no us.
Re:TCO (Score:2, Insightful)
Canada pulled out of the treaty because the party forming the government is ideologically opposed to government, climate change and international agreements on anything that isn't trade. They would have used whatever excuses they thought sounded plausible at the time.
Re:We could learn a thing or two.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Regardless of the reasons for pulling out of the protocol (which I don't suspect too much, as even the Canadian Conservatives are somewhat more enviro-friendly than the US Democrats) it was the best thing to do. Kyoto is a relic that needs to be replaced.
Re:Tar Sands (Score:4, Insightful)
So, Canada is going to let a multi-trillion dollar resource sit in the ground? That resource is going to get developed and shipped south to the USA and west to China. The oil sands will be developed. The oil sands contribute about 5% of Canada's carbon emissions currently so eliminating them completely would not put a dent in our carbon usage.
The fact is Canada is a cold, sparsely populated country with high energy needs.
It is so over (Score:4, Insightful)
you can now officially 'Kiss Your Ass Goodbye".
So the triumph of emotion over logic is essentially complete. I was a fool to think it would be any other way.
Stupidity: it's a renewable resource!
Re:TCO (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Durban managed an agreement that China, India, the USA will be included in a new agreement, which agreement will be negotiated in the next three years and not come into effect until 2020.
Note that this new agreement (the one to be negotiated by 2015) hasn't actually been agreed to by China, India, or the USA.
Note that the terms of the new agreement haven't been negotiated, so it's impossible to say whether binding agreements are going to be included.
And, note finally, that China (at least) has said that they won't accept binding limitations on carbon emissions before 2030 at least.
China and India? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the Summary: " including China and India "
This has to be from an American news source. I was listening to Radio Japan (shortwave radio geek) last night when they also announced Canada's stance, but claimed last night that it was because China and the *United States* do not adhere to the accord, so it's pointless, because the two biggest polluters in the world are ignoring the treaty.
Funny how the USA gets left out of the summary here. Hrmmm. Shades of 1984 when the news is changed to make your country seem not as bad as it actually is. I'd be suspicious of anything I read or hear from American news sources. Clearly there's substantial bias.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
The USA is a fine place to live ... they'll even let you leave if you don't like it.
Why do people say this ridiculous shit? As if it's not permissible in America to point out a problem, criticize the government, or ask for change?
"Love it or leave it." One of the most despicable turns of phrase of the modern American nationalist.