Canada, US and Kyoto

ambisinistral writes "The Commission for Environmental Cooperation, established under NAFTA to monitor North American environmental trends, has released their annual report. This article reports that Canadian polluters are doing worse than their U.S. counterparts. From the article, "Air pollutants released by Canadian industries rose 7 per cent from 1998 to 2000, while they fell by 8 per cent in the United States." This is of particular interest since Canada is a signatory member of the Kyoto accord. However, as this article reports, there are pressures inside Canada to withdraw from the Treaty."

Comments

Hold up...

[Justen]

Don't be down on Canada just yet.

Canada signed Kyoto back in the Spring of 1998. Canada's goal is based on a 6% reduction from 1990 levels by 2012. (It should be noted that a 6% reduction is a massive reduction.)

Unfortunately, they don't have to begin meeting that target until 2008. (There are reasons for this: upgrading their entire non-hyrdo power infrastructure, strengthening their already tight auto regulations, etc.)

So, until then, unfortunately, industry is taking advantage of their last shot to try to murder the environment, before their January 1, 2008 death sentence...

justen

(It's also worth noting that even with the increase since 1998, adjusted for population difference, Canada produces a quarter less pollution than the United States does.)

Re:Hold up...

[PD]

Wind power is shaping up to be the best alternative. There was a recent article - maybe it was on /. but I don't remember - about the new turbines, and how more megawatts of wind generating capacity has been installed recently than all the installations in the last 50 years.

Even the price is approaching parity with oil and gas fired generated, and will probably drop below. When that happens, it'll really explode. So, at least until someone posts a followup explaining why I'm full of crap, it looks like wind power might quickly become dominant in the US. We've got the vast open spaces, new windmills are more efficient, quieter, and safer for wildlife, we've got the wind, so it's one of those lucky convergences of technology, politics, and demand.

Depends what you measure...

[Phronesis]

While Canada's generation of pollutants is increasing, it's still producing less greenhouse gases than the United States. From John H. Walsh's 2001 carbon dioxide fact sheet:

Tons of atmospheric carbon generated per capita (2001):

• Canada: 4.4
• United States: 5.9
• European Union: 2.5
• China: 0.58

So even though the US greenhouse gas production is dropping by 1.7% per year and China's is rising by 4.3% per year, China will take a long time to catch up to the U.S.

Also, I would point out that while Canada's generation of all pollutants rose by about 7%, its production of greenhouse gases dropped by about 2.2%, more than the US's did.

Note also there is too much focus on the Kyoto treaty. This treaty is a dog. It would not do more than slow global warming by a few decades.

Re:Depends what you measure...

[Wyatt Earp]

"This treaty is a dog. It would not do more than slow global warming by a few decades."

Try a few years.

By 2008-12 Kyoto would decrease the global CO2 output by 5.2 percent, if developing nations, which cannot be bound by Kyoto, keep CO2 output at 1990 levels. A number of computer models estimate that by 2100 the average temperature would by .15 C less than if Kyoto was not implemented and global sea rise would be only 2.5 cm less than if nothing was done . Kyoto would slow global warming by only six years; the temperature we would have reached in 2094 would instead be delayed to 2100.

Pollution is not less with Kyoto

[ManDude]

This is messed up. The problems found in the report are not about greenhouse gasses, it's about direct pollution, like sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, lead production and dumping. The discussion about coal fire plants in the report is not regarding carbon dioxide output (which would be considered clean), but rather all the shit that creates smog that kills and acid rain.

I am not sure how Kyoto and the report can so easily be put together?

A little dated

[SimJockey]

The submitter should have looked at the article on Canada pulling out of Kyoto a little closer. It is from May '02, we have ratified our commitment in parliament since then so really, pulling out isn't really on the radar anymore.

Canada will probably leave

[t482]

1) Canada is a lot bigger than any of the other countries signing. (transport is the largest source of polutants).
2) Canada is a lot colder
3) Canada has a lot more trees and seaweed per capita than other countries ( more credits).
4) Canada benefits more than other countries from global warming

We WANT some C02 - just not the amount that cars give off and all the other crap they produce. The earth's atmosphere now contains 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1 % argon and much less than 1% carbon dioxide. If we were to burn all the coal, oil and trees on the earth it would almost hit 2%( heard this on quirks and quarks).

And since the major requirements of photosynthesis are sunlight, water and Carbon Dioxide green plants, mainly in the ocean, use light from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen, fixing the carbon in plants. Even though decay of these plants uses up some of this oxygen it's believed that over a very long period the oxygen gradually increased to its present levels at the expense of the CO2. But 600 milion years ago the earth's atmosphere must have contained a lot of carbon dioxide. The percentage by volume of CO2 could have been as high as 20 % because the 1:1 chemical ratio for O2/CO2 is also the volume ratio.

Personally I think shifting taxes onto polluters isn't a bad thing. North Americans could tighten their belts a bit and easily have a 6% reduction.
People love their SUVs and cheap electricity from coal.

Re:Canada will probably leave

[Phronesis]

The earth's atmosphere now contains 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1 % argon and much less than 1% carbon dioxide. If we were to burn all the coal, oil and trees on the earth it would almost hit 2%

The earth's atmosphere contains 350 parts per million of CO2. That's a lot less than 1%. If CO2 really rose to 2%, this would be about a 60-fold increase, and would represent twice as much CO2 as the earth has ever seen.

The concentration of CO2 never exceeded 1% in earth's history. Oxygen concentration started to increase and carbon dioxide to decrease about 2.75 billion years ago, and by 2 billion years ago, the concentrations were quite close to today's levels. You can find a nice account of this here. See, in particular, the last slide, which shows a graph of CO2 and O2 concentrations over the last 4 billion years.