Canada is the latest country to decide that the Kyoto Protocol is an onerous burden for no discernable gain
In a somewhat surprising development, Canada, a long-time supporter of the Kyoto Protocol, announced that it may want to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), a six-nation coalition focusing on voluntary emission-reduction steps and technology transfers. Many environmentalists oppose AP6 out of a fear that it may undermine political support for the legally binding Kyoto treaty.
Legally binding? Who they gonna get to enforce it, the US?
Canada has run the numbers and Kyoto just doesn't add up
Reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions to meet Kyoto Protocol targets by 2012 could cost each Canadian upwards of $3,500 a year for the next several years, according to research done by The Fraser Institute, an independent research organization with offices across Canada.
The alternative is to purchase foreign emission credits, a move that would transfer $30 billion from Canada to other countries.
"In order to meet the Kyoto targets, Canada will have to make drastic cuts in its emission levels. No matter how we go about it, meeting a target that begins less than a year away is going to incur significant costs," said Nicholas Schneider, a policy analyst with The Fraser Institute and author of Welcome Back, Kyoto, published in the April issue of Fraser Forum, The Fraser Institute's monthly magazine of critical thought.
"One of the questions governments need to consider is, are Canadians willing to pay those costs?"
Schneider notes that research in the U.S. found people are willing to spend $13 to $21 per month to reduce climate change.
"If you convert that to Canadian dollars in 2007, that works out to a range of $200 to $300 per year - far below the $3,500 per person per year that may be required."
And here's the rub, the radical anti-Capitalists who are advocating Kyoto, and who are fueling the hysterical, end-of-the-world doomsday scenarios know precisely what the costs to successful capitalist nations are
Schneider's research looks at Canada's current emission levels, the Kyoto targets, and compares the results achieved by other countries to the targets for Canada. What he finds is that the easy options available to other countries are not available to Canada.
"You can control emissions by lowering a country's population or its GDP. But it's unlikely government would choose these policies since Canada has a policy of increasing population largely through immigration, and Canadians would be averse to falling real incomes," Schneider said.
And it is precisely this result that is intended. How else can you explain the fact that they were so willing to exempt the worlds largests carbon dioxide emmitters, namely China, India and Mexico, in order to make the deal "legally binding"? Because the target was, ultimately, the United States: To bring down the most successful economic engine in the world, and end capitalism as the driving force in the world.
Adding up the costs has forced people to challenge the assumptions advocated by the "environmental" groups promoting the doom-and-gloom environmental apocolypse
Before Greenpeace or anyone else criticises the Government for its failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it should cite the valid verified scientific proof that carbon dioxide causes warming of the earth to an extent that would involve New Zealanders paying President Putin of Russia for so-called carbon credits. This today from Owen McShane, chair of the policy panel of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition responding to a statement Friday by Bunny McDiarmid, executive director of Greenpeace which called for the immediate introduction of a carbon tax.
"There is no scientific evidence that justifies a carbon tax," said Mr McShane. "All we have is a scenario promoted by government funded scientists who are part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on computer modelling that has been slammed by many independent climatologists around the world as lacking any scientific validity or credibility.
The renewed scrutiny brought to bear when governments start groking the costs of Kyoto has forced people to realize that the Emperor has no clothes: In this case the fact that there is no scientific evidence to support the draconian measures policy makers would have have to enact.
"What Kyoto will do, like the sale of indulgences in the Middle Ages, is make people and organisations pay for emissions of carbon dioxide by buying credits from countries like Russia that have vast tracts of forested land.
"New Zealand should have followed the example of other Pacific Rim countries like Australia and America, and refrained from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol until the science of climate is settled. Currently, and since 1998, the earth has been cooling. New Zealand still has the right, up until February next year, to withdraw from the Kyoto agreement without penalty, and it should do so."
And so should everyone else.
There are whole host of good reasons why the US and other countries should work to cut their carbon emmissions, and use less fossil fuels; not the least of which is national security. The more oil the US and other countries import, the more money flows into the hands of dictators, despots, and Islamists.
If I had my way, each and every oil and coal burning power plant in the US would be replaced by clean nuclear generators.
But none of that negates the fact that Anthropogenic Climate Change is a play to destroy capitalism by avowed Communists and has zero basis in scientific fact.
