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Guest Post: Startling The Global Community, Canada Withdraws From The Kyoto Convention
Submitted by John C.K. Daly of OilPrice.com
Startling the Global Community, Canada Withdraws from the Kyoto Convention
Canada has announced its intention to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions (GGE), sandbagging the other signatories to the convention. The Kyoto protocol, initially adopted in Kyoto, Japan in 1997, was designed to combat global warming with the agreement allowing countries like China and India take voluntary, but non-binding steps to reduce their greenhouse gas carbon emissions.
International condemnation was swift.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said at a news briefing, "It is regrettable and flies in the face of the efforts of the international community for Canada to leave the Kyoto Protocol at a time when the Durban meeting, as everyone knows, made important progress by securing a second phase of commitment to the Protocol. We also hope that Canada will face up to its due responsibilities and duties, and continue abiding by its commitments, and take a positive, constructive attitude towards participating in international cooperation to respond to climate change."
Xinhua, China's state news agency, labeled Ottawa's decision "preposterous, an excuse to shirk responsibility" and implored the Canadian government to reverse its decision so it could help reduce global emissions of GGEs.
Beijing’s comments are significant, not least because the PRC is currently the world's biggest producer of GGEs after the U.S., but China has stalwartly insisted that the Kyoto Protocol remain the foundation of the world’s efforts to curb GGE emissions, which scientists maintain are a significant contributor to global warming. Pleading its special status as a developing nation China at the recently concluded climate change negotiations in Durban was granted an extension of the terms of implementing the Kyoto protocol until 2017 even as it bowed to pressure to launch later talks for a new pact to succeed the Kyoto protocol that would legally oblige all the big GGE producers to act.
Japan also expressed displeasure at the Canadian decision, but in a more nuanced approach, Japanese Environment Minister Goshi Hosono urged Canada to continue to support the Kyoto agreement, which included "important elements" that could help fight climate change.
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres opined in a statement released to the press, “I regret that Canada has announced it will withdraw and am surprised over its timing. Whether or not Canada is a party to the Kyoto Protocol, it has a legal obligation under the convention to reduce its emissions, and a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort.”
A spokesman for France's Foreign Ministry called Canada’s decision “bad news for the fight against climate change.”
Even plucky Southern Pacific island nation Tuvalu weighed in with its lead negotiator Ian Fry bluntly stating in an e-mail to Reuters, "For a vulnerable country like Tuvalu, it’s an act of sabotage on our future. Withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol is a reckless and totally irresponsible act."
The silence from Washington on the issue was significant, as the United States Bush administration refused to sign the protocol, arguing instead that China and other big emerging emitters should come under a legally binding framework that does away with the either-or distinction between advanced and developing countries.
Toughing it out, Canadian Minister of the Environment Peter Kent stated that the protocol "does not represent a way forward," adding that meeting Canada's obligations under the Kyoto convention would cost $13.6 billion, asserting, "That's $1,546 from every Canadian family - that's the Kyoto cost to Canadians, that was the legacy of an incompetent Liberal government."
Canada’s decision nevertheless has garnered a few supporters. Australian Minister of Climate Change Greg Combet has defended Canada's decision, remarking, "The Canadian decision to withdraw from the protocol should not be used to suggest Canada does not intend to play its part in global efforts to tackle climate change." One might note here that coal is Australia’s third largest export.
So, why the abrupt Canadian volte-face? Canada has the world's third-largest oil reserves, more than 170 billion barrels and is the largest supplier of oil and natural gas to the U.S.
The answer may lie in Canada’s far north, in Alberta’s massive bitumen tar sands deposits, a resource that Ottawa has been desperate to develop. Since 1997 some of the world’s biggest energy producers have spent $120 billion in developing Canada’s oil tar sands, which would be at risk if Ottawa went green in sporting the Kyoto accords.
According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, more than 170 billion barrels of oil sands reserves now are considered economically viable for recovery using current technology. Current Canadian daily oil sands production is 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), but Canadian boosters are optimistic that production can be ramped up to 3.7 million bpd by 2025.
So, what’s the problem?
Extracting oil from tar sands is an environmentally dirty process and the resultant fuel has a larger carbon footprint than petroleum derived from traditional fossil fuels, producing from 8 to 14 percent more CO2 emissions, depending on which scientific study you read.
So, Canada acceding to the Kyoto Treaty terms would effectively kill the burgeoning Canadian tar sands extraction industry. The Canadian tar sands already suffered a massive setback earlier this year when the Obama administration effectively sidelined the Keystone XL pipeline, which was due to transports tar oil production across the U.S. to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
So, Ottawa on the Kyoto convention has effectively drawn its line in the sand(s.)
Where things go from here is anyone’s guess.
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Bingo!
If I were a Canadian or a Russian I would probably welcome global warming. Those Canadian and Russian winters can be really cold!
It''s an ill wind that blows no one any good.
Hmm, since I flagged this one up a couple of days ago, and ZH is pandering to my type of crowd here, I'll take the time to give a serious (non-ranting / not taking the piss) answer, unusual but hey.
Oil & Anthropic Climate Change and what Canada's bailing really means...(a quick 20 minute essay, off the top of my head).
#1 Anthropic Climate Change exists. At this point, anyone who "seriously"1 denies ACC is as deluded as the worst fundamentalist religious types. Simply put, you're in the same boat as people who decry that evolution is "only a theory".2 Are there issues over incomplete data? Yes. Are there issues over knowing exactly what oC of warming will happen, and where? Yes. Are there issues with politics becoming emeshed in the second stage reporting / discussion of the science3? Yes.
Do all of these mean that anthropic climate change doesn't exist? No. Science works like that. You form hypothesises and then disprove them until you can't. It is called the "falsification principle".
Here's an example: one of the most infamous "smoking guns" that climate deniers put forth revolves around hacked emails and 'fixing' stats: Climategate. You might note that just before Durban, Russian 'hackers' released another 5k emails4 - and yet, six enquiries and re-checking all the data sets has lead to the same findings: the data still supports ACC.
#2 Time. Time here is the largest problem, in three ways. Firstly, anyone stating that glaciers have melted before, dinosaurs lived in a tropical climate5 is correct in the manner a small child is, but simply doesn't understand the concept of geological / ecological time. Ice ages take 100,000's of years to expand and contract: ecological systems take 1000's of years (if not longer, depending on the variance range in environment). The issue with Co2 emissions is not simply the amounts in the atmosphere, it is the time scale in which they've been released. Which is approx 200 years from the start of serious industry. Geological / ecological time requires thousands of years for species to adapt6: in the short space of time we've dumped huge excesses into the system, there simply isn't the capacity to adapt to the changes brought before a critical crash in the system.
Secondly, Time is important because7, oil is a one shot deal. Like the Whale before it, a planet gets a single chance at using all of this stored energy8 and if you fuck up and blow it all on hookers & coke (or plastic McDonalds' toys & Humvees with large engines to make your penis insecurities go away) that's it. Humanity moves forward (allegedly) when energy is cheap: as a species, the leap forward to 'modern'9 brain sizes most likely came about from eating all the fucking large fauna that was too dumb and large to get out the way. Ignore the hippies who claim there was a golden pre-Agricultural period where we lived "at one with nature", we actually ate a good 90% of land mammals (and birds, NZ we don't forget you) as free and cheap energy. NOMNOMNONMNOM > Brain growth. Agriculture replaced this giant KFC fueled rampage that allowed our brains to grow disproportionally large. We need to replace an over-reliance on Oil as energy, because it is becoming less and less energy efficient to extract, and more and more environmentally costly10. For the trogs here: growing an ecosystem akin to the rainforests or old forests of Canada takes (you guessed it) 10'000's of years: and replacing it with quick growing spruce delivers nothing like the complexity and depth11. This is important because the myth that we're actually in charge of the planet, or able to manage ecosystems is vastly lacking: nature does have some fairly hard-core ways to deal with environmental upsets, but the myth that ecosystems become balanced through stasis is purely that: a myth.12
Thirdly, Oil contains so much energy that it actually speeds up Time for humans. Wait, you cry, stop smoking that weed or taking those mushrooms! Actually, I'm deadly serious: oil has sped up our civilisation and caused space to contract13. This means that all of our current systems (or a vast majority) are designed around this contraction/dilation field. Agriculture: green revolution, based on oil energy. Infrastructure: internal combustion engine, based on oil. And so on and so forth: this effect is so pervasive that you forget certain things. Such as what happens when your entire society takes three months to get shipments around the world using steam. When "greens" print books such as "Simple in means, rich in ends" they're actually living in a much slower and limited time/space than an oil based society. Oh. And forget about large cities (over 2million) if there's no more oil. As such, we need to both mitigate oil becoming less and less "free" in energy terms, both by going slower in certain fields (such as transport) and focusing on solar / nukes / whatever we can to cover the "essentials" of modern civilisation. The other option is gigadeath.
#3 Canada & Global Environmental treaties - tragedy of the commons in action. The problem here is that huge environmental issues need to be tackled globally and have humans running them, which is a very bad combination. Developed / developing world, history of Colonial exploitation, population size vrs KJoules / Capita and so on. The problem here is that14 a large industrial nation just put two fingers up at the world, and said: "We're with the USA - fuck you all". And that means all bets are off. There's plenty of evidence out there that Canada could have managed to hit its targets if it had actually done anything about them (see the link above, outlining how a devolved central power was ignored by local concerns, Libertarians beware) and yadda yadda yadda. But the bottom line is that if vast countries act like children here, then it becomes a race to the bottom - or in this case, a race to burn / control the dwindling supplies left. That's a recipe for war.
Here endeth the rant.
Oh, and to the total MUPPETS who state that private capital doesn't pollute privately owned land, you're INSANE. Private Capital has no qualms about polluting land, space, oceans because of two things: it never pays the costs associated with the pollution (unless regulated upon), and anyone with any serious knowledge of the fines involved http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/top100.html knows that the cost analysis always comes down on polluting, as the dividend compared to penalty is so vastly disparate. Hint: Private Capital's CEOs rarely live anywhere near the pollution, so it is Somebody Elses' Problem: that's why places such as ghana end up having hundreds of thousands of tonnes of broken computers shipped to them ~ as a dodge, and a dumping ground for toxic crap.
Top tip: The Earth is both finite and one giant system. Shipping your waste to another country is akin to shipping your waste to a landfill - out of sight isn't out of mind, and it will come back to haunt you (or rather, your genome).
+1 great post..nails it...we're fucked..the most complete hubris is extinction.
enjoy what's left. for those who haven't seen it yet, Chris Martensen's 'Crash Course'. Discusses the hockey stick exponential curve acceleration that we're now in, of the three E's: Economy, Energy, Environment.
With all the increasing disruption to our existence that the rapid changes in these three factors will bring/are bringing, we will not be able to evolve as rapidly as we need to to cope.
Now would be an appropriate time to take stock, attempt an acknowledgement of 'the precautionary principle', understand the absolutes of a finite planet, and start making clever sensible self-preserving decisions on how we survive the post-evolutionary epoch of the Anthopocene.
Addendum:
Russia backs Canada in vetoing Durban, gets accepted into the WTO today. Three hours ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16212643
Hmm. Conspiracy that oil money runs the world, or that the bad guys are using ACC to stifle the planet?
Follow the money, not the wishful thinking.
Happy Happy, Joy Joy! Perhaps there is hope for humanity to be finally freed of the AGW fraud.
6 weeks and 3 days as a member, and this is all you have written, omniversling, standard greenie talking points? Either you are a spam bot or a Fucking Troll. Either way, go back home and suck Sunsteins dick.
You sound more like a troll to me sir. Attacking not the message but the messenger...
In the past, I have posted plenty of material and links to support my contentions. Troll I am not, simply someone who does not want to pay taxes to unelected bureacrats, politicians and scientific fraud artists.
that's the best he can do
My suggestion Omni, if you truly believe in AGW or ACC or whatever is the flavour of the month, is to put your money where your mouth is, kill yourself and donate the CO2 saved to the darter snail.
Use of weapons, You wrote all this in 20 minutes off the top of your head, including citations?
Just for fun I googled some of your talking points and they are from the usual greenie spin doctoring, mind control bullshit artists.
You, like your AGW religion, are a liar.
blahblahblah
Agreed Memy. Stop trying to force greenie taxes on me and I will shut up. Otherwise, fuck off.
I'm not trying to tax anyone.
Your arguments are fallacious and you suffer from a very bad case of confirmation bias.
Or your arguments depend on your paycheck.
You even contradict your own earlier posts...which tells me you don't form your own opinions on evidence based science but rather something more spurious.
well said
Science: it isn't Religion, no matter how deeply you cannot understand it. Yes, I know it appears magical to those who can't understand it, but really, it isn't.
And yes, it took 20 mins due to linking in sources - none of the "talking points" differ from the thinking of major oil companies, for the record.
Time again: never dream that all subjects think or react in the same time frame you do; some think slower, some think faster. I'll leave you to realise where you fit on the bell curve there. Hint: you're on the left of this writer. Waaaay to the left.
p.s. For a post that includes the idea that "ignore the ignorant hippies, we're only smart apes due to rampant ecologically damaging carnivorous behaviour we engaged in", I find accusations that I'm your "normal Green brainwashed idiot" amusing at best. Or I guess reading comprehension isn't your strong point?
Hillarious...you expect us to believe you wrote your post in 20 minutes, because you are somehow superior to the rest of us? Nearly everyone on ZH is smart enough to see your post was nothing more than a cut and paste job. Besides,Do you really think anyone gives a shit about your mental masturbations?
You claim to have a superior IQ without knowing anything about me other that a few scribblings on ZH? On what basis other than arrogance do you make such as assertion? No wonder AGW science is in such a parlous state?
Personally I do not care if you are smarter than me, all that means is you are a bigger fool for being taken in by the AGW scam. Good luck trying to convince anyone to pay carbon taxes to you and your ilk. They may be stupider but they are not as dumb as you think, Most of the normals understand one thing, smart people will lie to them to take their money You, despite your claims to being well right on the curve, are too stupid to understand this.
"Cut and Paste"
TROLOLOL
We'll use Science, shall we?
Running the text (without footnotes) through www.grammarly.com and www.turnitin.com both produce 0% plagarism. ~ although I'm not proud to say that grammarly.com found 26 grammar mistakes and 11 punctuation errors (although, being honest, I don't care, as it was written for this audience, not a peer reviewed paper). So, that Scientific algorithm thinks you're full of shit.
So, at this point, Science tells me you're desperately trolling, and I file you under "bantha fodder".
Now fuck off, shill.
I do not understand why you think running your post through a grammar checker and plagarism algorithm proves anything. How does www.turniton.com prove your arguments, or refute mine?
All you did was combine a set of talking points and then try to impress us with your erudition. There is nothing original in what you wrote, just it is the same old greenie BS.
Anyways, you and your bumbuddy fagmeister are on the wrong side of history, you are losing and you know it. Must really suck to be an educated derelict like yourself.
I'm afraid you're showing your training there, Mr Man. Unlike your job, we don't recieve a standardised A4 page of "talking points" to use in arguments on the intarweb. Any ideas I expressed have been thought over, referenced against numerous papers and books containing peer reviewed Science. At least two (eating all that mega-fauna and Time dilation due to energy input) are most definitely not part of any mainstream Green thinking; they are, however, supported by Science.
See, there's the difference. You have a single sheet of "talking points" you barely understand; I have a large body of scientific research to draw upon. Including most major oil companies, who willingly acknowledge that their profession isn't one that will last into 2100.
1997, Head of BP acknowledges Global Warming is a real issue
2004, Shell Boss admits that he is "really very worried for the planet"
Sadly, the only "losing side" here is the # of humans who will die off.
But sure, you stick to your "talking points", getting paid for trolling and otherwise not understanding the world you live in. Here's the difference: if any of my "talking points" were inaccurate, I'd admit it, and change my mind: you, on the other hand, are clasping onto an ideology of denial, and thus won't discuss ideas, just throw out naughty words like "Marxist" and "Fagmeister" and "Religion".
Here's an original thought on oil, that I didn't share as it is a little unorthodox: Oil is largely the product of extinction events. The mechanics being that once 70-90% larger species die off in a short time, this produces both a strata layer of biota nicely packaged to form pockets of oil, and the following 'grow back' necessarily involves blooms of simple organisms (such as algae; lack of predators / competition being the key in the initial stages) which form the largest % of oil biota. The irony is that we're killing off our own biosphere (6th extinction event) by misusing the product of the last five.
Nature, and the Universe, it seems, has a sense of irony.
Interesting Use of Weapons, how you confirm that the large integrated oil companies like BP and Shell support AGW. Could it be because they are controlled, respectively by the british and dutch crowns? Could it be that trading carbon credits aka derivatives, would be another way to fleece the public of billions and billions without having to drill another hole?
You are entitled to your speculations, and I admit they would make for great speculative fiction plot lines, but rhetoric is not proof. AGW, despite billion wasted, is nothing more than a shibboleth for the greenies, who would gladly exterminate most humans in the name of their death cult ideology.
I recall in one of your earlier posts you alluded to me as being left on the bell Curve. If the curve is plotting intellectual dishonesty, then I stand guilty. Tell you what, post one of your original papers and I promise to read it thoroughly.
The entire solar system is warming and we know they faked data at East Anglia. What does that tell you?
Both of those statements are so mind bogglingly stupid that I just suffered an aneurism.
The only way the "entire solar system" is warming is that the Sun will in about 5 billion years enter a Red Giant phase.
The data at EA university wasn't "faked", and there's been enough scrutiny to prove that conclusively.
p.s.
Santa isn't real either.
Not only was the data adjusted, but when Phil Jones was compelled to produce it, why he misplaced the original unmassaged date. Keep lying, and notice how support for AGW keeps dropping......like Fagmeisters limp dick.
Support for ACC is "dropping" because of two things:
#1 There's vast sums of money being spent muddling the issue and leading non-thinkers into doubt
#2 It's the economy, stupid. CEOs are placing the survival of their companies over Green issues; Consumers are choosing to drop Green ideals to make ends meet (the entire "Walmart Effect" - or don't you have any idea about economics?) and developed countries are choosing National interests over Global ones.
Sadly, you can't even read a Wiki page on Climategate (which I helpfully linked to), showing the six enquiries into the issue, and how they all found Jones innocent of what the raving lunatics have been claiming. I don't deal in "support", I deal in "consequences". And those are going to be like the current EU / USA / China crisis, but much much worse.
Then again, Russia just joined the WTO - you happy?
I agree that the economy has something to do with the drop in AGW support. As for vast sums of money, the greenies have spent billions with little success trying to con the great unwashed into carbon tax servitude.
I know of the enquires and they are nothing more than political whitewashes, that interestingly convinced no-one,.
For once, the Marxist dialectic is not working for you AGW clowns. No matter how hard you try to create the problem, the vast majority simply do not believe it exists. They have already figured out the con and now will never be persuaded.
Keep writing, however, I am enjoying your scribblings.
Yep, you're using the correct check list. I hope you're paid well for that crap; having seen a few trolls in my time, I'm giving you a mere 4/10 for plagiarism and lack of vitriol. I Googled your text and found that it was strikingly similar to a number of web sites paid for by the Koch brothers or hosted by Fox news.
Hint: I have never (in the post above nor elsewhere) supported or suggested Carbon Taxation as a solution to the issues. Nor am I a Marxist, of any flavour. Personally, I think that neither produce a solution to the problem at hand ~ but as you're merely trying to smear with some "oogga booga" scary words, you're not interested in that.
Oh look! Santa!
Fucking shill.
"Hitler Harper is making the calls now"
I see Harper has PAID his shills to sign onto Zero hedge.
Yep... you can take a guess at who.... he only shows his face in GW related posts... and his posts are devoid of content... I believe that he is on the Koch Bros. payroll.
Carbon Credits! Carbon Credits for sale!
Classic. It doesnt matter if anyone is actually living up to the agreement which every one of them aren't even coming close. More important to keep pretending. Idiots
Canada: the next superpower!
Sell oil sands to the Americans and Chinese. Get rich and watch the world burn. Lands opens up in Canada for settlement! Brilliant.
This is the right thing to do.. I'd rather have a job in 5 years and feed myself, than give it up to a tree. I know it's "heartless" to want to live.. deal with it.
yeah, good thing all the newfies are able to come to Alberta to work in the oil patch, now that their cod fishery has been decimated.
The static Earth. Quite an obtuse concept, particularly when it comes from the "academic" left. One need not have graduated from harvard or yale to understand that the cosmos is a violent place. And it will wipe out most life on the planet as it has done often in the past. But let's not trouble ourselves with reality. Al Gore knows whats best for us.........
I knew there was a catch to leaving Kyoto. Not common sense but corporatism. What a wreck harper is making of Canada.
On the AGW issue:
The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year.[6] In 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy
Yes, and without a biosphere, the temperature would be -18 oC even recieving all that energy per second. Hint: take a look at Mars.
Science: complicated, but it works.
Green = Red