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Canada First Nation To Pull Out of Kyoto Accord
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.'"
Sad day when the Canadian's get it right and we're (Americans) led by liberal socialists...
too much unconventional oil in Alberta
wow.. I wonder how much a 2 degree change in average temperatures will cost Canadians?
By 2019 they will be saying "never mind about what we said about the hot weather, just get your mittens and coats ready when solar magnetic decline and solar minimum freeze (y)our (r)ears off in 2020".
I thought Durban managed an agreement that China and India *will* now be included.
Is this guy speaking for the government, or just another political blowhard?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
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.
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.
OMG! Heads are exploding!
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.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Conservative government that is about to make huge amounts of money for their oil buddies with the tar sands in the midwest part of the country.
Yeah I can see why they want out of the Kyoto protocol.
that $13 billion number is likely the amount they're about to reap from tar sand processing
Unfortunately due to the earthquake, I wouldn't be surprised if Japan's CO2 output increased considerably this year. A very large # of nuke plants(not just Fukushima) have been shut down for maintenance and safety reviews, and may not be started up for a while. So Japan has made up the difference through a combination of saving energy and oil/coal plants. Obviously those plants have to be outputting a huge amount of CO2, not sure if it will cause Japan to miss it's targets, but naturally there is going to be a lot of pushback if other countries start complaining about Japan's CO2 output....
I can't say I'd blame them. As long as there are other countries gaining an economic advantage at the cost of environmental damage then I don't see that another country should pick up their crap and decrease their export because it's so cheap to produce in such "dirty" countries.
As long as there is such an active oil lobby and alternative energy sources like nuclear fusion is being treated like something from Star-Trek I don't see any short term improvement by forcing countries to reduce their carbon footprint.
BTW: Has Canada been given the favor they their trees are eating up a lot of the world's carbon dioxide and producing oxygen? Prolly the next thing scientists are coming up with is that oxygen is making global warming even worse.
I don't know about you but I'd rather the earth has its next climate burp in a few thousand years, not in this century thanks to our emissions. Citing natural climate cyles in a vague handwaving style is currently fashionable amongst the Ostriches , as if because something happens naturally that means its excluded from happening due to human intervention. I guess in that case because beavers build dams then there's no way we could have done the same. Or because tree's fall down on their own in a forest then lumberjacks must be some made up invention by the eco-industrial-complex?
Escalation ended many wars (including the 2nd)
Escalation will end the war on global warming too
But I still have a lot of respect for the people who think they can improve the world with language. Their reality is better than the one I live in.
we still get a carbon tax
There is no fair treaty acceptable to the West. Some of us westerners dabble with percentages ("20-20-20"), but the fair treaty would take the total sustainable emissions and divide it evenly between every man, woman and child on the globe.
That fair deal would of course send all of the rich nations back to the 19th century, and no politician would seriously even speak it out loud. Easier to blame India and China for being the worst polluters.
In fact, even that "fair" deal wouldn't be so fair since the rich West has already been able to grow its industries for centuries with virtually no pollution controls. So we should allow the developing nations a similar century of free reign, and to balance, maybe ban all emissions in the West during those hundred years.
And in the end, the fundamental problem is the sheer number of people on the globe. If only we could get the total world population down below one billion, we could get a handle of the problem. The population reduction might come yet, but is there a way to do it humanely by voluntary birth-control?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-30/world-shouldn-t-wait-for-u-s-resolution-on-climate-agreement-japan-says.html
Canada may have been the first to formally withdraw but Japan started the ball rolling by refusing to extend the Kyoto Accord.
This is a good day to be an American.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
An interesting explanation of what lead to this was posted by an user on Reddit. (Disclaimer: I'm not from Canada, so I can't confirm/deny what that user said, but there's plenty of upvotes and comments from other canadians lending some credibility to his explanation.)
"This is actually way more complicated than the one paragraph article makes it seem. To fully understand this, you have to know a little bit about Canadian politics. So now I'm going to talk a little bit about Canadian politics.
By some measures, Canada is the most decentralized country in the world, barring absolute anarchies in Africa and all that shit. Power is divided between the Federal Government and the Provincial Governments in an entirely non-hierarchical manner; provinces and the Federal Government each have their own distinct spheres of influence, and the Federal government cannot tell a Provincial Government what to do within the provincial sphere any more than a province could give the Federal Government orders within the federal sphere of influence.
Without getting into huge amounts of details about how power is divided, it's sufficient to say that much, if not all of the powers that would be required to enforce the Kyoto protocol are within the Provincial sphere of influence, however the Kyoto Protocol was signed by the Federal Government essentially unilaterally. So then the Federal Government has to try to bring the provinces on board with Kyoto, to avoid shirking international responsibilities, but it has no power to force the issue. So then, surprise surprise, some of the provinces dont feel like shooting their oil economies in the foot to play ball with a treaty that they never agreed to. Particularly Alberta, which is basically Canada's Texas, decided that the Federal Government had nothing big and scary enough up their sleeve to threaten them into compliance, so they decided they were not going to enforce the Kyoto Protocol internally at all, and the Federal Government could do absolutely nothing about it.
So now it's in a position where it has to either severely cut carbon for every other province that's willing to play along or pay internationally for Alberta's decision to not give a shit. Yes that's right, the Federal government would have to pay for Alberta not meeting the pollution requirements. Not fair? Well then the Federal Government should have made sure people were on board with this before signing instead of bringing home an unpopular treaty it had no power to enforce. OR the Federal Government can drop out of the Kyoto Protocol, as it has done, learn from the mistake and make sure to get the approval of Provincial governments before signing the next environmental treaty that will undoubtedly come up.
TL;DR: Canadian politics is hella complicated, and while no one likes pollution, Peter Kent is 100% right in the article: Signing Kyoto, especially in the way Canada signed it without enough internal support, was a mistake."
My sig became obsolete, and I lack the imagination to create a new one.
Our government is run by a bunch of jerkoff crackpots.
It's going to be hard to convince any nation to sacrifice for air quality when China has smog as thick as peas soup over major cities and pretends it is not a problem (link goes to http://observers.france24.com/ article):
http://tinyurl.com/85xkhka
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
... 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.
Mr Kent,
It's 13.6bn dollars that would affect the Canadian super-rich companies, not the average Joe Canadian. If the wealth were equally distributed, maaaybe.
Such populisms are old tactics and it's not exactly flattering for you to use such an old impression stunt...
I'm no longer fed up with MS Windows: I go rid of them
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?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
"China announced that it will reduce the intensity of its carbon dioxide emissions..."
Please be aware that the term "intensity" refers to the increase of the rate of production i.e. the acceleration. It's not putting the brakes on.. not even coasting... just lifting your foot a bit off the accelerator. I hope the U.S. numbers are indeed about reducing emission rates.
There's probably no anthropogenic global warming.
Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
... you rock! Good game!
Oh, gee, thanks for the ostrich.
So demanding we step back and try to find solutions that actually work, as opposed to asking everyone nicely to go out of their way for their fellow human being or possibly fictional future offspring, is now a reason for sending condescension my way.
Nice to know how much respect I can expect for trying to remain level-headed.
Did it occur to you that "the climate change itself isn't that much of a problem" does not equal "Let's do nothing about pollution and our extremely problematic consumption of resources!"?
Jesus fucking H Christ... Sometimes I understand mass murderers...
So they'll have to find plants that photosynthesise without light...
PS where will the Americans move to when their land is no longer productive?
They're a oil producing country of course they rather have people rely on oil than other sources.
This will undoubtedly be marked troll, but I'll try anyway: No, we are not headed for a wall.
There is a great deal of evidence (if only the media would let you see it) that global temperatures have not risen for more than 10 years. Ice extent in Antarctica is near record levels. Yes, we should avoid trashing our planet. However, climate is complex, and CO2 levels have a vanishingly small impact - except on the funding of particular groups.
None of the climate models yet produced have successfully predicted anything. Tropical storms are not more intense. Sea levels are not rising any faster than they have been since the end of the last ice age. Etc, etc.
So: why should we invest billions and trillions of dollars based on models and predictions that do not work?
Kudos to Canada.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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. But thank you, thank you, for saving me the money that would be wasted doing my part for the world.
Main oil supplier due to tar sands operation is not going to give up it's filthy habbits anyway.
> Why do you use it again?
If I had to guess, it's because American is too ambiguous for his pedantic mind (i.e., North? South? Central? USA?)
Either you replied to the wrong post or you forgot to post AC this time. Whoops.
Sorry if you can't handle criticism but I guess you'll just have to suck it up.
"Jesus fucking H Christ... Sometimes I understand mass murderers..."
Now you're making no sense at all.
I'm not troubled by any of this. Canada First Nations represent only 2% of Canada ;)
Today I'm rather embarrassed to be a Canadian, given that the government chosen by the majority (well, first-past-the-post majority, anyway) of my fellow citizens apparently doesn't consider it worth $13.6 billion to try to stave off the spectre of global warming (I suppose it's really too late at this point anyway, but attempts to mitigate the damage can't hurt). Of course, spending $30 billion on F-35s when the role of fighter jets in contemporary warfare can usually be fulfilled by missile systems (as has been the case since the late 80s - see Gwynne Dyer's "Keeping the Old Game Alive" episode of the "War" documentary series) is considered a wise investment.
Addendum: I don't have anything against F-35s, other than the fact that they (like all fighter jets) are flying killing machines; they're marvels of engineering, but something can be a marvel and still be a rather unreasonable item to spend large amounts of money on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
In our case the commons resource is the amount of oil extracted and spent to generate CO2 in the atmosphere. Since you can bet all you want no nation will back off until they feel bitten in the ass, we are like lemmings deciding that they will not break before jumping off the cliff, if the other don't break either. I am sad for the children born today and tomorrow which will inherit from our gluttony and be left with their eye to cry (in 50, 100, 200 years take your pick).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
... I'm ashamed of being Canadian.
Those are law proposal / not yet in application. call us when they are signed, on the book, applied. Then we can talk.
And so calling you lardasses "americans" is rather silly.
But since you think there is nothing in the world other than yourselves, this does seem to be a bit of a problem for you.
Get over it.
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.
Jesus fucking H Christ... Sometimes I understand mass murderers...
who? oh you mean the environmentalists. Just a thin sickly sweet veneer of respectability on some pretty gross motivations.
"reduce growth" = people freezing to death under highway overpasses
"reduce pollution" = we won't need those sewage treatment plants once the residents are dead.
If the environmentalists had the courage to admit their convictions, that their plan for measurable reduction is a bloodbath, then, although I'd continue to disagree with them, at least I'd respect them for their successful introspection.
Speaking out against enviromentalism in the 10's is, literally, like speaking out against nazism in the 30s. Maybe this time we'll be civilized enough to avoid another holocaust?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Now we need to pull out of other bad treaties, like ACTA!!
> They are assuming that the desert in the Southwest USA will never reach them.
Well raised point. Things change, sometimes they change a lot and one will not want a conservative -- which is by definition unable to respond to change -- at the helm.
> 'We are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto.'
Sure, they have the right -- the right to escape their responsibilities... Though I understand Canada was not involved as a major producer of the world's pollution (it is, but much less than the US, England and other first industrialized countries), it's now a world problem -- and exactly from emergent countries it is expected that less problems are caused... because now they know better.
> 'That's $1,600 from every Canadian family — that's the Kyoto cost to Canadians, that was the legacy of an incompetent liberal government.'
When he means incompetent, the way I understand he's not talking about use of polluting energy sources. He's apparently (to me!) considering that a better deal could be achieved. I don't know if there's some way to meet CO2 reduction targets with less cost, but then by all means Canada would be invited to do it and teach the world how-to. Instead, it seems he wants to escape the responsibilities like the lazy bums conservatives usually are (the common thought being "it was never done before, why should I have to do it now? that's unfair").
I might be a little biased here, and not everybody fits the stereotype, but in my recent experience (including local Politics) conservatives and neo-conservatives are a bunch of snake oil merchants telling everyone it's possible to do things by simplification and not having excessive controls. They're supported by corporations which don't want -- surprise -- to be controlled and be free to do things as the Gulf Bay spill (since when leaving open a giant tap can be considered a "spill"), fsck everyone and pay almost zero, nada (as it seems to be the case of the Exxon Valdez).
> 'The Durban Platform, by contrast, merely prods countries to come up with a new agreement that will go into effect no later than 2020.
That amounts to "I will do something, not what is needed but what I think I can do, some day, I promise." If that's not being irresponsible, how would we call it? "Fiscally conservative"? Ha! Total lack of morals...
In the end, they're much like the anarchists, who don't want any control from anyone. But when things don't go the way they want, they resort to violence and even construct an ideology of why it's valid to abuse minorities.
And that's why we won't do without a more powerful central government (a role which right now could only be played by the UN), much like citizens can't be protected without a well-structured democratic government (though eventually some democracies don't work so well and favor wealth accumulation by a few).
Meanwhile, Canadians have to pay for virgin CDs to fight unlicensed copying. Congratulations, Canadians, on your choice of leaders.
Now, let me question, since a leader is someone who leads, isn't it stupid to choose as leader a conservative person who wants to stay put?
I am Canadian, and I would pay that 1 600$ right now if it were to follow Kyoto accord ! Were canadian... We the people who (normally) show the right way to the rest of the world !!! Sadly with a conservative party, they went down the drain.
It cheaper now to deal with stabilizing the ecosystem than latter ! And it feel it going to cost us our life like a lot of people already paid it with if we do nothing...
""reduce growth" = people freezing to death under highway overpasses"
BS. No growth simply means living conditions remain as they are, which given even the poorest in the west generally have satellite TV and a waistline that would sink the titanic are pretty good compared to truly how poor people live, all things considered.
This got to be Obama's fault. Didn't he meet Canadian prime minister just last week.
Canada's federal debt is estimated to total $566.7 billion for the 2010â"11 fiscal year
And the Canadian budget is ~$278B for 2011
So $13.6 billion over several years is small by comparison, and is an investment, some % of which would come back in taxes.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
It shows great hubris to think our nation of 30 million can make any worthwhile difference when 2,400 million (China, India) are busy doing the exact opposite and 575 million (US, Japan, Russia) are busy ignoring everything.
Wow I had no idea you were completely insane.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Problem with all these discussions is that they end up being arguments about who gets to make money from the problem and who has to pay. But if we turned off our global civilization now it would still be a very long time before the rising temperatures slowed or even reversed. Meanwhile we ignore the people who are currently suffering from these changes and close our eyes to the millions just starting to be affected. But there is probably no where near the money to be made relocating groups and helping them to adapt to the changes as there is (potentially) in using 50% of the output of a power plant to blow the CO2 underground, etc. And in my mind the inconvenient truth is that we are recovering from the fourth ice age -- triggered as I understand by the Arctic going ice-free. So are these changes completely artificial or did we just hurry the cycle up a bit? Meanwhile we cover the landscape with wind turbines and dump their unwanted electricity generation at bargain rates while crudding up the air with even more GHG from gas turbines because we are too terrified of nuclear to expand it. Seems as usual we are focusing on the wrong problems, enhanced no doubt by our over-inflated egos. This withdrawal was no surprise to anyone in Canada -- too much oil money running around, especially supporting the "Harper Government of Canada(tm)". One wonders if the smart money has started investing in Arctic beachfront vacation properties yet? Meanwhile the most affected parts of the world continue to suffer.
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!
I bet David Suzuki is pretty pissed at the Conservatives right now.
Now, put in a tax on ALL GOODS based on the CO2 from where the good comes from. Do it based on CO2 per sq km, CO2 per ppp GDP, or a combination of the two.
Speaking out against enviromentalism in the 10's is, literally, like speaking out against nazism in the 30s. Maybe this time we'll be civilized enough to avoid another holocaust?
Godwin's Law definitely applies to this post.
I am officially gone from
We have all Canada customer use that service... How can I get that service in china ?
wholesale solid wood kitchen cabinets and bathroom cabinets direc from chinese rta cabinets manufacturer
"So the guys at Gitmo and those in prison are glad to be where they are?"
People in Gitmo are in Cuba and are POW's. What does that have to do with living in the United States?
People living in prisons have committed crimes and are detained until they serve their sentence. Undoubtedly, they would rather not be in prison, but life sucks when you're convicted of a crime.
"your border agents will detain illegal aliens *leaving* the US"
There are ways to leave the United States legally, even as an illegal alien, But you do realize the reason they're called "illegals" is that they have committed a crime?
Do you know what the penalty is in your country for illegal immigration? I assure you, the U.S. is lenient compared to your country.
"so you are not as free to leave as you might think"
You're just confused and haven't proven your point at all.
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.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Peter Kent said the protocol "does not represent a way forward for Canada" and the country would face crippling fines for failing to meet its targets.
This whole Kyoto treaty thing seems to just have been a charade from the start. It is weaker then even conservative projections suggest it should be
to have a noticeable positive effect, it's not binding in any way and if you screw up and utterly and deliberately fail to meet your goals you can just step out
without any consequences except looking like a giant douche.
Better figure out a way to convert those tar sands directly into food products. I've heard that the US is already experimenting with promising technologies,
something about putting it on pizza.
To create a global currency - based on trading securitized CO2.
There are no technical or behavioral measures in any proposed treaty. Only carbon trading. How is this accomplished? Always by establishing derivatives. You know, like they did for real estate.
The whole scam is a part of the war for dominance between financial capitalists and energy capitalists.
Enlightened, educated and well-intentioned folk are the useful idiots of speculative, financial capital oligarchy on this one - just as the backwards fundies are the human tools of conservative thuggery.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You are legally bound to file a tax return every year, even when you no longer work there. You're also bound by FBAR, which means you must disclose every type of bank account (savings, checking, investment) currently at use. Failure to do so has crippling penalties (financial and jail time). The US and Eritrea are the only 2 countries in the world that tax on based citizenship, not where you earned income or place of residence.
Oh, in case you're thinking about relinquishing your citizenship, the "exit" tax might be as high as 50% of all your assets.
Blame Canada!
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
I have yet to see a Global Warming argument that shows how rising temperatures would have any deleterious effects on me or my descendants. Yes, climate will change. Yes, farmers may have to start planting different crops to adjust for that. Yes, the sea levels may rise and some poor vagrants out in Nigeria may have to pack up their dirty rags and hike a few miles inland. Oh, and all of that will happen over a hundred years or so. A hundred years ago, there was a forest where I live. Three hundred years ago there was no sign of human habitation around here aside from an occasional indian.
After the planet warms up, life will still go on just fine. The Earth is not a fragile christmas ornament; it always finds a way to keep on going just fine. Half a billion years ago, when CO2 concentration was ten times it is today, and the global temperatures were quite a bit warmer, life thrived. Life will adapt and so shall we. The Earth will not become uninhabitable, only a little different.
In light of that, the anti-CO2 argument is basically that I and my kids should reduce our standard of living now without any tangible benefit to us in the future. My response, naturally, is "forget it".
The per-capita argument will be made by any poor country, you need to counter it with a strong fairness argument based on something else. For instance, you might divide by CO2 emissions by GDP instead and get a different map. The argument for that is that the goal is to lower CO2, but you want to increase the overall standard of living so a factory producing a widget at 1 ton of CO2 is preferable to one producing the same widget using 2 tons of CO2 no matter what country it sits in. Then the counter argument becomes, "Raw GDP isn't fair because some widgets will sell for less in China than in the US, you need to adjust for purchasing power." So then you adjust for purchasing power. After a series of such adjustments we can end up with something that a citizen in both a developed nation and an underdeveloped nation understand as fair. From that point you plug it into economic growth models and come up with efficiency targets that will over time lower world emissions as the world economy grows. How to meet those efficiency targets can be handled per country knowing you won't be penalized for your country's economy growing as a proportion of the overall world economy.
Hello Everyone,
I just wanted to jump in and say, as a Canadian, I am deeply ashamed of this move. Leaving the Kyoto Accord and breaking our commitments to carbon reduction is not the will of the people, it is the will of Stephen Harper and the "Harper Government" that has stolen control of our political system and robbed Canadian's of their international dignity. After a number of Harper lead minority governments, they finally hit their ultimate goal of a majority via a very controversial election where they gained majority status with "a strong" 35% of the total vote. At the end of the day, this is not the action Canadians in general want, and 65% of us are counting down the days when we can through these crooks and liers back down to the gutter they crawled out of.
The point is how MUCH is being produced, not how many people are doing it.
That would be the point only in very-very-VERY-limited, overly generalized and utterly unrealistic approach to subject.
From any real life point of view, economical to biological, the number of humans producing CO2 and other greenhouse gasses is a VERY important factor in the equation.
Cause countries, being imaginary lines on the land drawn by humans, produce no CO2.
You're pointing to that yourself with that Germany example - draw a line differently and the country's numbers may change, but a person riding a bicycle still releases less CO2 than a person riding around in an SUV.
Also, that Germany example is utter nonsense.
Germany reunified in 1990, and their per-capita CO2 has steadily declined since then - regardless of their population numbers.
In fact, due to their ever-dwindling population numbers they are back at the population size they had in 1996.
And yet, their CO2 level is down by 1.7 metric tons of CO2 per capita - since 1996.
Per capita numbers tell you if someone is producing CO2 because they have to (gotta put food on the table) or because they are being a selfish prick.
See why they matter?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The parties that supported Canada signing the Kyoto protocol DID do something bring down carbon emissions to meet the targets.
For your edification I present: Climate Change Accountability Act (Bill C-311).
The reason no action was taken to meet those targets is because Harper used the unelected senate to obstruct legislation (Bill C-311) requiring carbon emission cuts.
What a lovely bit of circular logic Harper has: We have to withdraw from Kyoto because we failed to meet our emission targets and we failed to meet our emission targets because Harper killed the legislation that would have decreased our carbon emissions!
...and less innovation may well happen.
And I'm not sure about that either, cause getting all that human flesh onto another planet some 60 million kilometers away MAY require quite a few of them eye-now-aye-shins.
On a (slightly) more serious note, I foresee a 7-25 minute limit between posts on Slashdot for all Earthlings, as it would take that long for the message to go to Mars and back to Earth - depending on the current distance between the planets.
Also, a boost in the popularity of turn-based-games.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Speaking out against enviromentalism in the 10's is, literally, like speaking out against nazism in the 30s. Maybe this time we'll be civilized enough to avoid another holocaust?
Quoting parent to point out how fucking stupid that statement is.
China is also ramping up it's release of pollutants as it installs many more coal fired power plants (in addition to nuclear, solar, wind, dams etc.). The NOX and SOX and other pollutants released by industries and power plants are a worse problem than CO2.
China has a tough problem. It is expensive to expand industry without polluting, and they have often taken the cheap route in the past.
Canada's First Nation = (american) Indians living north of the border
Kyoto = Japanese city, traditionally the home of the Imperial Family
Accord = mid size Honda
we even got a better extra long time offer for you. We'll also throw in a special of 6 months in jail for growing 6 weed plants or for downloading music BUT that's not all you'll also be a valuable asset to our new up and coming private correctional institutions, BUT don't hesitate and act now....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Because it's toxic to humans, which is what I am.
Why would Canada continue to support a CO2 agreement in which the top 3 CO2 emitters in the world are not covered by the agreement? China, US and India emit a combined 13.5 billion tonnes of CO2 per year and yet pay no penalties. Canada emits .5 billion tonnes per year and was about to pay heavy penalties. Canada joined at first to try to make it happen, but with China and the US dragging their heels and paying no penalties while continuing to increase their emissions, the treaty became useless.
Gradually shift electricity generation and automobiles to natural gas. US has over a century's worth now.
The chief concern is methane leakage. Methane is twenty times more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So a greater than three percent leakage would cancel its carbon benefit. P.S. Methane leaves the atmosphere much quicker than CO2.
Another good thing about natural gas is that appears to be market-drive by lower costs. Most of the US alternative energy initiatives fail when the huge federal subsidies run out.
It has been embarrassing to see my fellow Canadians elect Harper and his "Conservatives" (read: Reform Party in disguise/Canadian Republican Party) in the first place. I think his only goal is to maintain power so he can remake Canada into a miniature version of the US under the Republicans. No doubt he wants to have us give up our sovereignty and become additional states down the road. Sorry to all you US /. readers but I see that as a very bad thing :(
I wouldn't buy a used car from him. I am deeply embarrassed that my fellow citizens have been stupid enough to elect him and then give him a majority government.
Whatever they say is the reason for pulling out of Kyoto officially, the real reason will be that his corporate owners do not want to spend additional money to be environmentally responsible instead of making profits and he knows he has a stranglehold on Canada at the moment and can do whatever he wants.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Hopefully future environmentalists will be able to learn something from this. You can't just set a target for number to go down and impose fines if it doesn't happen. You have to take the bigger picture into account, and attack the problem at it's source. If you are going to impose fines, they'd better be spent in the country they were imposed.
Better yet, just secure an agreement to build new power, transportation, and flood control infrastructure across the world. Is it too much to ask that an agreement actually have something directly to do with the problem.
The current Harper government is a Conservative government; they'd use whatever reasoning they could to get out of something like this.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
China's growth is fueled by western capital and industrial espionage. They afford western capital by selling to the west. And without the west, they would have to conduct their own R&D. China desperately needs us.
Why not try? my gov has no interest in trying.
we don't need to ace kyoto, if we failed by a small margin
that would be a limited success.
Instead our gov doesn't even care to try.
what are we, Americans? I did vote for harper.
and harper didn't earn a capital letter for his name.
True conservatives sure haven't held up well to the corporate attempts to hijack them, it appears so in every nation.... A true conservative who sticks to the past ideals for actual reasons knows the value of long term planning and when lessons derived from the past are learned the required adaptation respects the ideals of the past. History shows a conservative position is a losing position but it exercises caution and not every change is for the better, without some restraint progress would actually be slower.
It seems that most conservatives today have no real ideology and are cowards who fear change-- life itself is change; its no surprise they get worse with AGE (with comes with a human bias towards the greater days of our youth which is a myth because of how human memory works.) Say... ever notice how some aggressive types are quite fearful? (bluffing)
Other conservatives seem to merely defend their own selfish interests; as many successful people fear any changes that could alter their lifestyle/interests. This is a powerful bias that can warp most anybody's judgement; it really has nothing to do with conservatism but since the conservative position usually is defending aspects of the status quot it is adopted by the successful. (Ironically, they are often quite self confident but not enough to think they can make it if any tiny thing impedes them; although, that kind of attitude probably contributed to success as well.) This happens in both parties but I wouldn't say equally or in the same ways; at nation to nation levels it happens too then the parties tend to agree.
Between these two major character flaws I rarely see an ideological conservative today and when I do they do not like associate themselves with the other "conservatives in name only" who've hijacked the ideological word as cover for their flawed characters. Ron Paul is a rarity, he tries to reclaim the brand but he used to distance himself when he was Libertarian and got nowhere... I know the selfish types who didn't believe the Iraq thing and were for it so their gas would be cheaper. I also know the individualist success types who fear anything will rob them of their justly earned success (which often forget all the little people who got them there.) Perhaps I know almost no true conservatives so I have a bad sample group? I knew 1 old guy who gave me a lot of this insight who is extremely resentful his party died and became a zombie.
Propagandists (aka P.R.) have learned how to exploit these human flaws (or 'base desires' if your into Freud's work which served as a foundation for modern P.R.) I would argue these flaws are easier to exploit than most others (obviously not fear itself.) Many politicians I believe are corrupt and play a part in the game; they exploit it and some fall for it before they enter into the game. Problem in the USA is we have the true believer suckers getting into office which was never the plan, so now the con men have to contend with their own followers behind the scenes forcing them to keep up the act when off stage.
The "liberals" are also a dying group; the term is a dirty word in the USA so the fakes adopt other labels and as they protect the powerful corps who increase control over them, they becomes more conservative but with usually different less effective marketing. Reagan actually could be a democrat today and since he wouldn't make it in the GOP he'd have little alternative. It also shouldn't be a surprise that the richest nation of the west would be the most "conservative" one as well given what I've said above.
Go a head troll me for being too close to the truth. Reality sucks, learn to deal with it; stop tuning out (which makes you susceptible to manipulation.)
As I see it, the right-wing Republican driven climate crisis denial conclave - backed by the money of big business (likely Big Oil in large part) is strong enough to sway public opinion in the US against actually doing anything. The reality of the situation, all the research that can be done, and all the information that can be provided to a generally unthinking public cannot beat the simplicity of telling those same people that its all a hoax and they don't need to do anything and don't need to actually learn anything or form an opinion - that they deserve their high standard of living because they are better people than all those foreigners and that its "God's Will"(tm). Its far easier for people who have little or no scientific knowledge to do nothing than to try to study a highly complex subject and form an informed opinion. Ignorant people resent those who are better educated generally, but everyone gets to vote.
Therefore in the end nothing will be done in the US (or Canada, my home, it seems now), and where the US does not go, no one else will either. China and India will lead the way to producing vast amounts of pollution on their part, using the West's inaction as justification, and the West will collectively point at the emerging nations and state they aren't going to do anything if they other side doesn't do it first.
The climate will change, millions of people will die, whole nations will disappear, the earth will be more or less permanently changed, the world economy will be a complete disaster, and in fact civilization as we know it will likely fall. There will be more major wars over resources disguised as attempts to promote democracy by meddling in other countries' politics and we will slowly slide down the scale of civilizations to become another footnote in future histories - if anyone writes them.
But that's okay because the CEOs of some major companies in our current world will continue to get multiple million dollar bonuses and the financial wizzes that get us into each successive disaster will continue to be rewarded by not being punished. The shortsighted view that keeps the power elite and the rich families in their place and the rest of us in our lower caste positions will be maintained.
The millions of dead will mostly be in other places after all, and we can just turn off the TV - or switch to news about something superficial like the latest celebrity news - and avoid all the ugly footage of people dying of disease and starvation and warfare.
I really hold out no hope for humanity. We are too shortsighted, too stupid, too easily lead around by marketers and politicians because we are too ignorant generally. Sadly the people who are going to die as a result of this monumental stupidity are not going to be those who perpetrate it.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
As well, if we lock up more of our population - they can't be working either so that creates additional jobs. Harper wants Canada to emulate the US in every way it seems. If I am reading this correctly about 1 in every 100 US men is currently in prison (http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aaprisonpop.htm). That is a huge population of effectively slave labour that can be farmed out to businesses. Private prisons can engage more heavily in this of course.
When the first new prison is completed, Harper should be the first inmate. Placed in solitary.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Strictly speaking, an American is any resident of either North or South America. So while you are technically correct, it makes more sense in this context to specify exactly which American country the original poster. /pedant
No, that's not what "strictly speaking" means. If you want to be as pedantic as you're trying to be, you can't strictly define what "American" means, because the term is ambiguous.
The Atacama desert, the driest place on Earth, barely gets into the 70s.
It's not about the temperature, it's about the precipitation.
What Canada will get is the temperate zone for food production going northward, which is a good thing.
Screw it, I'm going to Mars.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
I am not embarrassed to be Canadian. The Kyoto Accord was a joke from the very beginning. Without the big polluters like China, India and the USA actually bound by it, it is completely meaningless. When China, India, and the USA actually agree to be bound some future international treaty regarding pollution, then it will be time for Canada to participate. Paying to curb our emissions while those other three do as they please is the equivalent of pissing into a hurricane.
It is classically disingenuous, hypocritical and opportunistic for the Conservatives to declare the Liberals would not honour Kyoto.
The main obstacle to progress on Canada's carbon reduction is the Harper Conservative government's devotion to the vastly damaging oil sands projects, and its greedy cronies in Alberta. But lying and manipulation is what Conservatives do best.
An extraordinarily offensive advertising campaign is currently running in Canada defending this ecological disaster with photographs of beautiful wilderness.
you had me at #!
The agreement has been a total disaster. It has actually encouraged nothing but political tom foolery. Each participating nation has done little to get off CO2 emissions. Hell, the bulk of EU is moving their worst emitters over to nations that are NOT covered by kyoto. That is a joke. EU is killing their nuke power plants and then buying from either other nuke plants OR buying from coal plants outside of kyoto. In addition, you have EU 'BUYING' CO2 credits. It is INSANE.
The ONLY way to make this happen, is for nations to TAX ALL GOODS (local and imported) based on CO2 emissions from where the item is assemblied and where the largest sub-components come from. Keep in mind that this is not a tax that remains there. It is up the nations where items are produced. If a nation has close to the accepted amount of emissions, then they will have no taxes. OTH, a nation like China will have 100% of the increasing taxes (yes, CHINA). In addition, this tax needs to be calculated NOT on per capita, but on PPP GDP or SQ km of land. The fact is, that ppl are not the major emitters. It is the GDP that does it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Heck, I researched the IR spectrum of various polluant , absorbance, half life in atmosphere (CH4, CO2, SF6 , etc...) and a model on them. So.... your trolling fall flat on the face.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Two things I want to point out.
Firstly, Canada makes up about 2% or so of the total world "pollution" as measured for such protocols as Kyoto. The oil sands in Alberta make up about only 5% - 6% of the identified emitters in Canada. That means the oil sands make up about 0.1% of the greenhouse gas emissions for the world. On the other hand, the 4 million vehicles in the greater Toronto area make up nearly 20% of the total greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. While I'm not saying the oil sands are good or bad, they should be tempered by values elsewhere. A reduction in vehicle emissions would have a far less economic effect then completely eliminating the oil sands as well as having a larger effect on the greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, perhaps we don't a vehicle or more per person. We don't need more roads to handle more traffic. Maybe we just need a better plan.
There has been a lot of talk about how the conservative gov't is not a "true" majority as they don't have over 50% of the popular vote. Well, I submit that there have been only 4 gov't that have had over 50% of the popular vote since 1921: Louis St. Laurent in 1949 and 1953, John Diefenbaker in 1958 and Brian Mulroney in 1984. The previous liberal majority gov'ts in the 1990's and early 2000's under Jean Chretian had popular vote percentages of 41.3%, 38.8% and 40.8%. Which, according to many people here, would mean they don't speak for the whole country either...
It would only cost $1600 a family to save the earth from eminent doom? People pay more than that on cable!
Yeah, the ones that deny "Piltdown" Mann is a utter fraud. The ones that deny the USA got hotter in 1934 (we saw them have to fudge the numbers TWICE to dethrone 1934 for 1998).
If the government wants to tax carbon to encourage companies and people to save energy, keep the money in the originating country and ensure it is used for some useful, like creating more energy-efficient systems.
"reduce growth" = people freezing to death under highway overpasses
Because the cause of homelessness is that there aren't enough houses?
#1: I think it is funny that Peter Kent is our environmental minister. He is best known for being a business commentator for a TV show. How is this guy our minister of environment!
#2: In Canada's defense the treaty makes no sense if the big guys aren't on board. I mean Canada is pretty brutal per capita, but we only have 30 million people. We are really small potatoes. Without countries like USA, China, India, Brazil, etc... what is the point?
#3: We were at least part of the treaty at one point in time, unlike all the a fore mentioned countries (sort of, I know some are members, but are required to make no sacrifice, which is BS). Of course that is not to say we actually made a like of progress towards those targets during that time. If fact I wouldn't be awfully surprised if we had increased CO2 since then.
#4: Yes this is about the tar sands. It is obvious. However as a government, they have to weigh the pros VS the cons. Yes this will increase CO2, and cause environmental trouble. However it would be a HUGE boon economically. The future of Canada for the next 50 years. It is understandably hard to throw that away. I think they have just proven they are willing to take a bit on the chin if it means keeping that advantage. This position is also made easier by the likes of the USA and China (which is funny as they called it preposterous!) Hell there is serious implications in that the USA certainly does not want us in it, and closing down the tar sands, which is really the only way they are going to have some independence from middle east energy issues. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a fairly weighty amount of pressure being applied by the USA to Canada to withdraw.
Before you flame me all to bits, I consider myself on the left and an conservationist/environmentalist. I am merely a little more pragmatic than most.
So instead of treating CO2 like a pollutant when it isn't lets try cleaning up some of the real environmental mess we've made on the planet. Stuff like depleted uranium (half life in the billions of years), mercury and genetically modified organisms .
Oh if you do think that CO2 is so bad then lets look at LFTR which emit none and are the cleanest source of power with the lowest enviro footprint of any including wind, solar, tide etc.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8&feature=player_embedded
In fact the Liberals did the exact opposite - after signing on to Kyoto the Liberal Government let the problem worsen dramatically so that by the time the Conservatives took power it was a hugely worse problem that would be fantastically more expensive to fix (as in meet Kyoto targets). It's an old political tactic - make big promises that your successor will have to pay for.
Funny how all the people blaming the government for pulling out of an obviously failed process aren't pointing the finger at the government that made it so much harder to make the process work. Shame!
Sorry but you can't avoid the facts, anyone criticising the Conservative government for not renewing Kyoto but not also pillorying the Liberal government, who signed onto Kyoto and then ignored the agreement they had just signed and allowed the problem to become vastly worse, is just here to score political points not because of any actual concern about global warming.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
"The government that signed the stupid agreement in the first place didn't do much of anything to actually bring down our carbon emissions."
They kind of wanted to. They even elected a leader who made a revenue neutral carbon-tax-shift (green shift) his main platform.
Of course the Conservative opposition, the mainstream media, and (thus, naturally) the Canadian populace wanted nothing to do with these progressive policies and ridiculed/bullied that leader to political death based on his French-sounding accent and big "intellectual" words.
Makes me damn proud to be a Canadian!
... you need per-capita numbers to be able to make anything out of those emission numbers.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This is the first smart thing I have seen the government do. Not trolling, I really believe it will only tax all human activity, and may as well include breathing. How can a gas that plants use to grow be bad. Co2 levels have been higher in the past, it's been warmer in the past. One volcano eruption spews more greenhouse gases than man can in 100 years. There has been no warming. the sea level has actually dropped. Even Al Gore didn't believe his own BS as he bought a mansion right on the coast line. Stop being suckers!
Sorry mate, as bad as he is , he's the best alternative we had. No more liberals for a while thank you very much. And they're right about Kyoto.
means one goal of the Koch Industries-funded agenda for Canada has been achieved.
Bringing American-style "health" care to Canada is another one.
greentech research. The nations like China who are pumping money into it will reap the rewards. The nations with governments pwn3d by Big Oil will be buying the results from nations like China.
What shape would America be in today if the only place where Jobs and Wozniak could have gotten money to start Apple with was in EU?
The US and Canada political leadership don't care if these countries are left out of the next hig-tech boom.
is part of the Koch Industries agenda for Canada. One element of that agenda just became part of the law of the Canadian land. Canadians can find a way to get rid of the Kochtopus tentacle you call Harper or suffer the consequences.
Ordinarily, I'd be calling for a boycott of Canada over this. What Harper is going to do for your nation if he is not stopped is far worse than anything anyone outside Canada can do.
We should impose a trade and travel ban on all non-Kyoto countries.
They want to pull out? Fine. But then they cannot trade with or travel to the nicer countries.