Problem with Kyoto

The problem with KyotoBy LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Having had a chance to do some research into the Kyoto accord, I have a question for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Stephane Dion.
Why do you support a bizarre United Nations treaty that is mainly concerned with transferring billions of dollars from the First World (i.e. us) to the Third World over a period of decades, without any guarantees this will lower the man-made greenhouse gas emissions you say are the main cause of global warming?
Start delving into the Kyoto accord and you'll quickly discover it has very little to do with sensible things like practising meaningful energy conservation here in Canada, or reducing our heavy reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal.
And plenty to do with having "Annex I" countries (like us) ship big bags full of our money to undeveloped and underdeveloped nations who may, or may not, use said funds to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.
Whatever they do, Kyoto contains no provisions to compel those nations to live up to their word when Canadians and others, either as taxpayers or consumers, bankroll projects abroad to reduce greenhouse gases.
In terms of emission targets, Kyoto rewards notorious polluters like Russia and other former Eastern bloc nations (can you say "Chernobyl"?) for the fact their already inefficient economies collapsed in the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union fell apart.
And it punishes "Annex I" countries, like Canada, for having allegedly disproportionately contributed to the global warming crisis -- long before anyone knew it was a crisis.
While underdeveloped nations under Kyoto have room to emit more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than we do, the treaty's solution is to allow us and other "Annex I" countries to purchase and trade "emission credits" from them and each other.
This means, in effect, paying a surtax for generations to other countries for the right to continue emitting greenhouse gases in our own country, above what would otherwise be the acceptable levels set by Kyoto. That's what buying "hot air" from, say, Russia, actually means.
The theory is that since global warming is a global problem, it doesn't matter which countries emit greenhouse gases as long as total emissions go down, which is all well and good, except that Kyoto contains no provisions to ensure emissions go down.
And here's a question just for the Liberals and former PM Jean Chretien, who signed and ratified Kyoto.
How, exactly, did we end up in a big, cold northern country agreeing to the impossible task of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012 (under the Liberals they went up 30%) while Australia, another first-world nation, which doesn't have our cold weather extremes, is allowed to increase its emissions by 8%. That is, if it had ever signed Kyoto, which it didn't.
All this is not to mention the inconvenient truth that the last time the UN got involved in an international agreement involving billions of dollars for the alleged global good, it was the oil-for-food program in Iraq. And we all know what a corrupt mess that became.
Then there's the fact some of Kyoto's strongest supporters say its present greenhouse gas emission targets would have to be strengthened by a factor of 12 to do any good.
And that some of the most radical climate change scientists in the world say that in order to meet the threat posed by global warming, we need to invest massively in nuclear power (which doesn't produce greenhouse gases, but does produce nuclear waste).
As I recall, none of this was ever mentioned in those "take the one tonne challenge" ads the Liberals paid for with our money before they were tossed from power.
As for Harper, why do you now support a treaty which you surely must know is a mess and why are you ready to have (shudder) NDP leader Jack Layton make things even worse? Other than getting yourself re-elected, that is.
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