Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
Wait... you know that the US was never in the Kyoto Accord, right?
And that part of the reason Canada is pulling out is that the world's biggest CO2 outputting nations (US and China) weren't reducing their output?
Less snow, more farmable land?
Maybe they plan to become the first producers of bananas within the end of the century...
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
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.
China and the US not pulling their weight is only the official reason I guess.
The true reason must be the enormous CO2 pollution that the exploitation of the tarsand oil or what is it called is causing.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
1 China[10] 7,031,916 23.33%
2 United States 5,461,014 18.11%
also, from [http://in.news.yahoo.com/durban-kyoto-protocol-gets-extension-111511742.html]
Canada, Japan and Russia had said that they do not want Kyoto to continue as it doesn't take into account emissions of emerging economies like China and India. The European Union wanted that they will agree to it only if all countries agree to a single legally binding agreement to cut down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The US is the only country that has signed Kyoto but not yet ratified it.
also, from wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reducing_emissions_from_deforestation_and_forest_degradation]
In recent years, estimates for deforestation and forest degradation were shown to account for 20-25% of greenhouse gas emissions, higher than the transportation sector.[6]
from [http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/10-countries-with-the-highest-deforestation-rates-in-the-world.html]
1) Honduras: -37% 2) Nigeria: -36% 3) The Philippines: -32% 4) Benin: -31% 5) Ghana: -28% 6) Indonesia 7) Nepal 8) North Korea: -25% 9) Ecuador 10) Haiti: -22%
So the countries who are every bit as responsible for CO2 levels rising due to deforestation, get paid, by the countries with money. The whole thing is bs.
The issue is much more complicated than excusing Canada and blaming it on the US and China.
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.
(US and China) weren't reducing their output?
Also, from [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the_United_States]
The White House announced on 25 November 2009 that President Barack Obama is offering a U.S. target for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the range of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. The proposed target agrees with the limit set by climate legislation that has passed the U.S. House of Representatives, but the U.S. Senate is currently considering a bill that cuts GHG emissions to 20% below 2005 levels by 2020. The White House noted that the final U.S. emissions target will ultimately fall in line with the climate legislation, once that legislation passes both houses of Congress and is approved by the President. In light of the President's goal for an 83% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050, the pending legislation also includes a reduction in GHG emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2025 and to 42% below 2005 levels by 2030.[9] The day after the White House announced the U.S. GHG targets, China announced that it will reduce the intensity of its carbon dioxide emissions by 40%-45% by 2020. Carbon dioxide emissions intensity is defined as the amount of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP).
So please stop pretending the US and China aren't doing anything.
>>And that part of the reason Canada is pulling out is that the world's biggest CO2 outputting nations (US and China) weren't reducing their output?
Are you aware that the only countries that significantly reduced their output... didn't? That it was only a statistical artifact from the badly-chosen start date of 1990? And that 1990 was deliberately chosen because it would give these fake savings to the UK, Germany, and Eastern Europe?
The UK "reduced" its emissions by choosing 1990 as a start date, which was right before they switched from coal to NG as a way of fighting the coal miners' unions.
Germany "reduced" its emissions by absorbing Eastern Germany. Eastern Germany reduced its emissions via the mechanism below.
Eastern Europe "reduced" its emissions by having the USSR implode, which subsequently killed its industry and thus CO2 emissions.
Australia also liked a 1990 start date, due to unusually high emissions during that year.
Read Liverman's discussion of the process here: http://www.environment.arizona.edu/files/env/profiles/liverman/liverman-2009-jhg.pdf
She makes a very good point that the date was set so that business could continue as usual, with certain countries winning "free" carbon reductions via a shady political process. Well worth the read.
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.
The key is to learn to ADAPT to the changing climate, not try to exercise control we don't and can't have.
And that is exactly what is happening. Continuing to cut down forests and emit CO2 during a warming trend, would be failure to adapt.
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.
The UK switched from coal to NG? That's news to me.
At this exact moment in time, UK electricity generation is:
Coal: 21.42 GW
CCGT 12.23 GW
Nuclear 7.29 GW
Wind 2.9 GW
It's not a switch from coal, rather increased capacity via CCGT. Coal still produces the lion's share of electricity.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
We are so screwed.
This may very well be the case. However, the optimistic part of the process thus far, has been that the climate change deniers are now pretty much looked up as quacks, when the initial reaction was total denial and skepticism. We've moved beyond that, to the point where people and governments, individually and collectively, are working on the "how" part.
;)
If we do indeed end up being screwed, it will be a direct result of our great success as a species, and however ironic and evidential a fact of life it may be, we at least have our success in which to take solace.
"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.
They are assuming that the desert in the Southwest USA will never reach them.
That's the attitude normally called "hubris"
.
It is a common misconception that deserts are caused by heat. There are cold deserts and hot rain forests. Deserts tend to be caused by other factors, primarily latitude (see a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_pressure_area#Climatology" this) and the rain shadow of mountain ranges.
An increase in temperature will not necessarily cause deserts to expand, though they might move if the equatorial low pressure (=wet) area expands. In the tropics, the summer tends to be the wet season: more heat leads to more evaporation in the oceans. The land gets much hotter than the sea, forcing hot moist air to rise, forming clouds and bringing rain. During the exceptionally hot 90's and early 2000's, the deserts in northern Africa actually receded. During the cooler 80's, the same area suffered droughts and desertification.
Will an X degree increase in temperature cause the deserts to shift all the way north to Canada? This is equivalent to asking whether and X degree increase in temperature will cause the southern Mexican jungle to expand all the way into the Mojave desert. X would likely have to be pretty large.
None of the above is relevant to TFA by the way. Canada pulled out of this treaty because they argue it is pointless as long as China and the US, the two largest polluters, aren't bound by it.
Hello from balmy Edmonton, Alberta. We had a high of -3C (27F) today which may seem cold to many of you but given that it's supposed to be closer to -15C this time of year -3C is nothing. We don't have the humidity so our -3C is like +10 in a place like London England.
What concerns me is what temperatures we're going to have to hit to average only a few degrees warmer than usual over the entire year. We'll be hitting -40 or lower in January to make up for this...
come and visit.. it's quite an experience.
oh.. the desert already reaches Calgary... a dry, windy and almost treeless city... but very cool place otherwise.
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.
They're not. They're carbon trading with India, among other places. So while developing and third world nations are trading worthless cash for a carbon cap they will NEVER hit this Century unless by some freak accident the country catches fire, the US, China and other industrialised nations carry on as normal and PRETEND that they have reduced their carbon output. No, all they've done is buy an offset to top off their own cap which they're hitting so hard it's bruising.
It's all one big con, a huge lie and a fucking ripoff, and the losers in this are you and I.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
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.
Sig is on vacation
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.
That's true, the Conservative Party of Canada who currently form the Government of Canada tend to base their views on what's "best" for Alberta, where they control all but one of the seats. The Prime Minister moved to Alberta as a child and has essentially become a caricature of Albertan disgruntlement with rest of Canada. It looks like the government was facing over $9 billion in fines for failing to act on Kyoto, mostly due to the tar sands projects which they haven't even bothered to monitor.
Although the CPC blames the previous Liberal Government, the CPC has been in charge for almost 6 years now. The Liberals didn't do much to meet the targets, the CPC has never had any intention of even trying to reach the targets. They've been actively working to sabotage international agreements since they came to power.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
This got to be Obama's fault. Didn't he meet Canadian prime minister just last week.
You've obviously never visited the Canadian prairies than. There's not a tree in sight that wasn't planted by settlers or a result of the seeds of those trees. I'm dead serious, I live in some flat ass fucking wheatlands.
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.