Canada has officially withdrawn from the Kyoto climate agreement.
The death notice comes years after the Stephen Harper government made clear it rejected the terms that were negotiated by the Jean Chretien government in 1997.
According to the agreement, Canada would reduce its greenhouse gases 6% below 1990 levels by 2012.
Environment Minister Peter Kent pointed to the fact the United States and China - the two largest carbon emitters - never signed on as reason to abandon the agreement. And one year ago Canada officially announced its repudiation of it, becoming the first country in the world to do so.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May - an environmentalist and fiscal conservative - called it a "day of shame".
"Harper's Conservatives present us with a fake contradiction between environmental protection and a healthy economy," May said in a statement.
Tory MP Rob Anders called Kyoto a "tremendous waste of resources."
"The fact we were the first country to pull out gives us credibility; we were the first to say, 'the emperor wears no clothes,'" Anders said Friday.
Liberal MP Stephane Dion, a main player in Canada becoming a signatory, called it a sad day.
"Of course Kyoto was not enough. But even though, it was the beginning of something more compelling for the next phase."
Dion was so in support of the agreement he named his dog Kyoto.
"I'm sad to say the dog is in better shape than the agreement it was named after."
the above article needs to be properly credited, to the QMI Agency, writer Jessica Hume.
ReplyDeleteStephane Dion was a former leader of the liberal party in a Conservative minority government, and was unable to regain control of it, relinquishing the post in 2008 after being defeated - again - by Prime Minister Harper.
Most Canadians consider the Kyoto Accord to be about as valuable as the product of Dion's dog - in French Canada, it's called 'merde'. Dion is the fool who wanted to give us a carbon tax, then claimed it would be revenue neutral. Ha!
As for May, the only member of her party ever elected, she may be a fiscal conservative...but if she ever gets the opportunity to enact some of her ideas, that will be out the door pretty quickly.
Sure th US cranks out alot of greenhouse gas, we are also the third most populous country on the planet. If looked at on a per capita basis though, the USA ranks no. 4, behind Australia (15% more than the us per capita) Luxembourg (+12%) Canada (+3 - 5%), then the USA. Turns out the US generates 26% of its energy via dams and nucs, plus, we have a more temperate climate than Canada. Hey if I lived north of Minnessota I'd heat my house all winter too! At least according to a UN website...
ReplyDeleteabout bloody time, Kyoto is just a wealth transfer to the elite.
ReplyDeleteThe world is slowly waking up to the truth about physical greenhouses. The interior gets hotter than the surrounding area becasue the glass (or plastic) blocks the wind and thus prevents the cooling of the interior. Turns out is has nothing to do with any selective transmission of light (or heat) through the glass. Experiments show that greenhouses made of special glass that is completely transparent to radiation from visible into infrared (i.e., heat transparent) simply heat up faster than glass greenhouses (becasue they let the heat directly in), and then get just as hot as the glass greenhouses. In other words, the "greenhouse effect" is one of blocking drafts. Do you think CO2 can block drafts ??? Not likely. If you doubt my message, Google "Greenhouse" and read what the makers and sellers of real greenhouses say.
ReplyDelete