Another one of those deeply strange animated news spots from Taiwan. Appropriate since we live in deeply strange times.
Canada is withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, Environment Minister Peter Kent said Monday, abandoning its 1997 commitment to cut emissions 6% below 1990 levels by 2102 and cementing the transformation of the country’s image as a global leader in the fight against climate change into what critics are calling a “climate renegade.”
By 2009 Canada’s emissions were 17 percent above 1990 levels. Canada faced nearly $14 billion in penalties for failing to reduce greenhouse emissions if it had remained a signatory to the Kyoto accord.
The Kyoto Protocol was signed by the Liberal Party, and Canada’s currentConservative government has made it clear since 2006 that it had no intention of honoring the Kyoto pact, in part because it does not cover major emitters of greenhouse gases such as the US and China.
Adopted on Dec. 11, 1997, the Kyoto Protocol set binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the EU to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Major polluters Brazil, India and China were signatories but as developing economies were not required to reduce emissions.
US President Bill Clinton signed the agreement but it was not ratified by Congress. Then Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee chairman Frank H. Murkowski said the Kyoto accord was “dead on arrival.”
The current Canadian Parliament hails from Alberta (home of the majority of Canadian oil production as well as the uber-dirty “tar sands”). While this industry is red hot, the Harper conservatives claim that touching it (or dealing with Kyoto in any way) will hurt the Canadian economy. This is a joke since the oil-patch still demands subsidies from Canadian tax payers, doesn’t pay its fair share of taxes, and only pays tiny royalties (properly taxing the oil-patch could quickly pay down Canada’s $44 billion debt but I suspect the tax-payers will get stuck with this). On top of all this, as soon as the Harper Conservatives attained majority government status in the spring, they sold off AECL (Atom Energy Canada Limited) for a mere $15 million (the phones and PCs were probably worth that much) after tax-payers spent billions building it in the first place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AECL
I am surprised that many Canadians didn’t see this “nail in the atomic energy coffin” coming from Harper’s constituents back in the Albert oil-patch. Western Canadians have always be distrustful of modern ideas and/or high-tech which is how we lost the AVRO Arrow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Arrow
Given the Conservative government’s long-stated opposition to Kyoto, why have they decided to pull out now, when COP17 in Durban has just agreed to put the Kyoto Protocol on an artificial ventilator to keep it alive (even though it is clearly brain-dead)?
Wow – I love it. Nothing like telling it like it is!
It never made sense for Canadians to fight Global Warming when everyone Knew that they needed much, much more of it.