Canada Now Likely To Withdraw From Kyoto Protocol

[hatrack]

Canada’s new prime minister and leader of the Conservative party, Stephen Harper, indicated during his election campaign that he would pull Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol, a UN treaty on climate change. As chair of the UN climate negotiations until November 2006, Canada would be put in the curious position of heading a coalition of 156 nations it is utterly opposed to. Climate-change policy experts say the move would be disastrous for the environment and could very likely unravel the beleaguered Kyoto Protocol.

The Conservative party has a history of questioning the science behind global warming and recently told the Montreal Economic Institute (108KB PDF) that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “hockey stick” graph that shows rapidly rising temperature in the 20th century “has been discredited and should no longer be used as a tool to demonstrate the presence of climate change.”

Before defeating the governing Liberal party in the January 23 election, Harper told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that he would abandon the Kyoto Protocol and set new Canadian-made targets that are easier to meet. In 2002, Canada was the sole North American country to ratify the treaty, pledging to cut emissions by 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. Because Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have ballooned by 30% above the country’s Kyoto target, the government can’t achieve the required emissions cuts, says Bob Mills, a Conservative Member of Parliament from Red Deer, Alberta, and a potential candidate for minister of the environment. “If we fail to make our target, we would be ordered to take a larger target, 1.3 times the amount by which we exceeded the first goal, for the second commitment period,” says John Bennett, senior policy adviser with the Sierra Club of Canada. The Kyoto Protocol allows Canada to formally drop out with one year’s notice after 2008, Mills adds. “The government will likely withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol,” confirms Ross McKitrick, an economist and climate change skeptic at the University of Guelph.

EDIT

Before the election, Harper hinted that he would dismantle the CO2 trading market and industry regulations that put controls on CO2 emissions set up by the Liberal government. Instead, the Conservatives will emphasize new technology, such as clean coal power plants, tax incentives for transit passes, and voluntary coalitions such as the Asia–Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, an international nontreaty agreement, Mills says.

EDIT/END

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/feb/policy/jp_canadakyoto.html

[phantom power]

1. My head just exploded.

:banghead:

[Dead_Parrot]

7. what you said. nt

[Canuckistanian]

2. But we ratified it.

Ah, it just hit me.

All of a sudden, the trade restrictions on softwood lumber are off. Now this.

A little tit for tat.

[Fiendish Thingy]

4. more like Quid Pro Quo, yes?

Does the PM have the power to unilaterally pull out of Kyoto w/o approval from Parliament?

[Canuckistanian]

5. I don't know in this case

Kyoto is more of an agreement rather than a treaty. I don't know if it requires Parliamentary approval to cancel it.

[BlueManDude]

3. thank you NDP!!!

[Canuckistanian]

6. Oh, be quiet

Without the NDP, there would be a Conservative Majority.
This isn't a Ralph Nader situation.
Quityerbitchin.
:hi:

[V. Kid]

8. Who cares, we didn't do anything when we were in it anyways...

...besides, this will just make him unpopular, as being pro-Kyoto is popular in Canada, being anti-Kyoto is not. Therefore he'll still be "scary", and beatable. And this position just keeps a more solid hold on a few seats in Alberta, big whoop (which btw, is pro-Kyoto from the last polls I saw too). The Liberals had the best (actually worst for those of us who care about the environment) position on the issue, they said they were for it, signed it, yet didn't really piss any industries off because they didn't do anything to combat climate change or live up to our international commitments. It was embarrassing for an allegedly pro-Kyoto country like Canada, that under the Bush and Clinton administrations, US Green House gases went up only 14%, whereas under Chretien and Martin they went up 30%. All the Liberals really did was talk about how we'd be trading "emissions credits" and paying Rick Mercer to encourage people to be more environmentally friendly in inane commercials.