COMMENTARY | On Monday, Reuters reported Canada became the first country to withdraw from the Kyoto protocol on climate change. The move shows a government that sees the impossibilities of the Kyoto expansion that was hammered out in the final hours of the Durban, South Africa, climate conference.
With a global financial crisis, why would energy-rich Canada be willing to pay $13.6 billion in penalties for not meeting required emissions cuts in 2012? To be more precise, why would it want to do what Environment Minister Peter Kent says is the equivalent of removing every vehicle off every Canadian road when other countries like China and India have no penalties for emissions?
Environmentalists were angered by Kent's comments, even saying, according to the report, that Kent spat in the faces for people around the world for whom climate change is increasingly a life and death issue. To that, I say worsening an already bad economic issue by taking ones' self out of the energy business or paying huge fines for the sake of years-down-the-road theories and goals can be, for some of your country, also a life and death issue. And an even quicker one, at that.
As hard as everyone has worked to eke out a deal to go back and show to their people as a sign of environmental consciousness, I believe getting global agreement on a multiyear or multidecade basis is an unlikely thing.
Particularly when you're conditioning it, mandating it and setting it down on countries that are strapped-down already. Canada is just the first, but I doubt it will be the only, country to say it just can't do Kyoto.
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