Stephen Harper has made a brave stand in favour of only halfway screwing over the Kyoto Accords. Despite Harper's pre-election rhetoric about ending Canada's participation in the Kyoto Accords, he has decided to not pull out of the agreement, but rather just not bother to meet the targets.
OTTAWA — The Conservative government will not pull out of the international Kyoto agreement on climate change even though it has no intention of meeting the deal's targets.The Tories have criticized the Kyoto Protocol for years, and during the election said they would replace Liberal spending on the environment with a "made-in-Canada" solution that would produce concrete reductions in emissions. The word "Kyoto" does not appear in the party's environmental platform.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday that his government is moving money away from ineffective programs and working on a plan that will be more successful at reducing greenhouse gases.
Among the commitments to the environment made during their election campaign, the Conservatives said they would require all gasoline to be composed of 5-per-cent renewable materials, such as ethanol, by 2010. They also promised tax breaks for public transit users and legislation to reduce pollution.
However, a spokesman for Environment Minister Rona Ambrose confirmed to The Globe and Mail that the government will not pull out of the Kyoto deal.
"There's flaws to Kyoto and we realize that . . . and we're going to work within Kyoto to build a made-in-Canada solution," Ryan Sparrow said. "We're working within it, so we can't be pulling out of it."
Working within it, but not bothering to honour it. This is a sad bit of political sophistry designed to innoculate Harper in Quebec, where the Kyoto Accords are very popular, while signalling his buddies in the oil patch that Kyoto is essentially a dead agreement on his watch. (Allowing said buddies to continue their work on whatever plan the Conservatives will finally table.)
If Harper wants to weasel out of the accords he should have the strength of character to do it, or he should damn well honour an agreement to which the country he leads is a signatory. This halfway-to-nowhere plan is less than worthless.
The next time some Blogging Neocon refers to Paul Martin as "Mr. Dithers", we might want to remind them about Halfway Harper's moment in the sun on this issue.
Not again...
Surprise, surprise. I'm so ashamed of Canada. 100 years from now people will spit when they talk about Canada. How can a country with such riches be so selfish?
I noticed the MSM ignored this story for the most part. I wonder if Albertans believe in karma?
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2006/04/04/alberta-drought-20060404.html
"Working within it, but not bothering to honour it."
Harper is already two steps ahead of Paul Martin on that one. The Liberals did next to nothing on Kyoto except to pontificate about doing something. What they actually did to help us meet our Kyoto commitments is not exactly clear.
Who knows, maybe Rick Mercer inspired us all to ride our bicycles to work and replace our old refrigerators.
And maybe something substantive came out from all those climate change stakeholders jetting across the country from conference to conference to discuss the issue. If it has though, I have yet to see it.
Let's face it, the Liberals' "commitment" to Kyoto was completely empty, it was a con – window dressing pure and simple.
The value of staying in the agreement goes beyond appeasing Quebec. It sends the signal that reducing carbon emissions is still a worthy goal, but there are practical limits to what we can achieve. It does not preclude our involvement in shaping the Kyoto process as it moves forward or restrict ongoing efforts to reduce carbon emissions. What it does do is acknowledge the futility of agreeing to something we haven't a hope in hell of fulfilling.
Chrétien had no idea of how Canada could even meet the targets to which he agreed. He simply wanted to one-up the Americans. It was an empty promise which he did absolutely nothing to keep. Ironically, Harper is far more likely to achieve something on the climate change file. But nothing short of a very deep recession, or some unanticipated revolutionary technological breakthrough could ever help us to reduce our carbon emissions to what was agreed when we signed Kyoto.
What a great idea you have to pour our wealth down the drain. Because we don't have enough people who go without.
What an interesting moment.
Harper is more honest about his complete disregard for the Kyoto Accords than was Paul (the conscience of humanity) Martin. The Liberals have been able to mouth the platitudes without delivering the goods, but eventually Canadians tired of the deceit (enough for the knuckle-dragging conservatives to get a minority government). But Harper's honesty about his insanity isn't going to win him any points outside of his base.
Perhaps Canadians might eventually be forced to vote for substance as opposed to rhetoric.
They wanted want the Liberals said they were for.
*rolleyes*
Remember folks: Keep focusing on the Liberals; a couple of Tory governments later, the NDP phoenix will rise from the ashes and bring about the millenium.
Harper is more honest about his complete disregard for the Kyoto Accords than was Paul (the conscience of humanity) Martin.
And this is impressive because? What, are we supposed to give Harper a medal for admitting that he's just faking it and then faking it anyway, instead of just generally faking it?
Mr. Townsend,
I notice that instead of reflecting on the substance of my post (that Martin's record on Kyoto was abysmal), you instead attempt to shift the discussion to how bad the CPC is.
Mr. Townsend and Garnet,
You misunderstand me. I am not impressed with Harper. I am not giving him a medal for being a tool of the oil industry. I am trying to point out that the CPC-types don't win elections because they are honest in their pro-corporate, anti-human, anti-earth political ideology, whereas the Liberals either keep quiet about their own pro-corporate agenda, or worse still, lie and claim to profess the values that most sane Canadians endorse.
The undeniable reality that Canada's record of greenhouse gas emissions during the first Kyoto years was WORSE THAN THAT OF THE UNITED STATES must reflect something about Paul Martin's Liberals. Instead of remaining in denial, let's meditate on what that "something" means, and what Canadians should do about it.
Yes, Harper is bad. Martin was just as bad, with dishonesty thrown into the bargain.
What does this mean?
Thwap: In part I was in a foul mood from reading, via the Dan Report, that the NDP had set up a war room for the Liberal leadership race - thus my hostile interpretation.
On the matter at hand, I would say - don't forget that that US-Canada comparison is a rather slanty bit of rhetoric most often used by Conservatives (and more rarely, Americans) to discredit advocates of Kyoto.
Yeah, they came closer to their targets - but they also had easy room to reform and we had extreme growth, plus the Alberta boom which is pretty central to the emissions issue. I believe something has to be done and can be done - I support the idea of emissions credits because I think they link environmental good to the imparetives that drive the business world that does all the polluting; I also belief in stricter regulation and improving technology.
I don't accept that the Liberal and CPC policies on Kyoto are comperable just because the Liberals dropped the ball; the Liberals need to put action behind principle, the Conservatives can't even pretend that's possible for them. The caricature of the Liberal position - a wholly fictitious concern with the environment - is an unembellished portrait of the Conservative reality. Keep Kyoto in limbo to pander to Quebec MPs, and eviscerate environmental regulation to pander to Albertan base.
Anti-human? Conservatives aren't the ones who want to kill off 90% of the world's population because it would be better for mother earth.