A lot of hot air about Kyoto

“The opponents of action on climate change live in a moral vacuum. It’s a horrible, unsustainable world. People call it realpolitik. Well, that’s bullshit. It’s just plain immoral. It’s about greed and money." - Tim Flannery

Yeah, well, try living without money for a while. See how you like it.

Of course, it would be great if we could all make money and save the planet at the same time. That's the goal; unfortunately, the Kyoto Accord was never going to do that for us.

It was all a big lie.

Support for the Kyoto Protocols in Canada has hovered at about 70 per cent. The newly-minted Conservative minority government is taking some serious flak in the media these days for axing 15 Kyoto-friendly programs developed by the previous Liberal regime. The criticism is as unfair as it is expected.

Another article in Vancouver's Georgia Straight this week (The Weather Makers by Terry Glavin) blasted the Conservatives for their opposition to the Kyoto Accord. There are some really eye-opening observations in the article about how global warming has already begun to exact a vengeance on our eco-unfriendly species.

Sadly, Glavin rehashes the same tired condemnations of Kyotyo's opponents without giving them the slightest credit; one would come away from reading the article assuming that the Conservative government and the American government (which has refused to ratify Kyoto so long as mega-polluters China and India are exempt) are fundamentally, unapologetically at war with Mother Nature.

But if Canadians were better informed about Kyoto and its implications, I doubt that they would be so quick to judge.

The laudable goal of Kyoto is to stabilize greenhouse gas emisions at below 1990 levels so as to prevent or at least reduce the effects of global warming.

No country that has ratified Kyoto has actually managed to cut emissions. Actually, emissions have increased by double-digit percentages. This is a reflection of growth in the world economy. Placing an artificial ceiling on emissions (cutting emissions by 70 per cent) without the benefit of science-fiction-styled eco-friendly technologies on that growth would entail an economic downturn worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.

For Vancouverites, just imagine the downtown eastside slum spreading out over the entire city. Try to visualize the corner of Broadway and Granville looking like Main and Hastings. Not a pretty sight.

Kyoto's other signatories are planning to meet their commitments by "buying" billions of dollars of "emission credits" from Russia. Basically, they'll be funding an increasingly autocratic, nuclear-armed regime guilty of massive human rights violations in order to reduce their own on-paper emissions outputs, without actually helping out the environment.

The only problem is, there aren't enough emissions credits to go around. Even by cheating, it would still be impossible for Canada to meet its commitments.

Basically, every country that has ratified that agreement has lied. They went in hoping for some sort of technological solution that never appeared. Now they're screwed - and so are we.

At least our new leaders have the guts to face reality and admit that Kyoto is dead.

And if we really want to save the planet, we don't have to wait for another international agreement to be negotiated.

Do you really need to buy that SUV? Is that noisy, smelly gas-powered leaf blower really that much more effective than a broom and dustpan? Do you really have to put up Christmas lights in October?

Just a few suggestions to keep our polar bears alive a few more years.

tags: Kyoto, hot air, Canada, environment, planet, Conservative, Stephen Harper