OTTAWA -- The Alberta government, which opposes the Kyoto accord, is playing down a new poll it commissioned that found a solid majority of Albertans support ratifying the controversial deal to fight global warming.
An Ipsos-Reid Group poll of 1,000 Albertans in April found that 72 per cent back ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.
Those results would appear to undermine the Alberta government's staunch opposition to the deal.
Federal Environment Minister David Anderson, who is trying to build a national consensus to ratify Kyoto and bind Canada to it, cheered the survey's findings and said they should prompt Alberta to change its mind.
"I have always said Albertans understand this issue very well and are strongly supportive of ratification."
But Alberta Environment Department spokeswoman Val Mellesmoen said the government does not believe that one poll question tells the whole story.
She said other poll results show a majority of Albertans cannot explain what the accord means. "Six out of 10 people don't really know what Kyoto is."
Ms. Mellesmoen said many Albertans backed ratifying Kyoto because the accord has become synonymous with fighting global warming and people assume it's the only way to accomplish this.
"Kyoto has been talked about for five years. It's a global agreement for a global problem and it's the only game in town . . . and that gets into people's consciousness."
The Alberta government has broken with Ottawa and walked away from the Kyoto Protocol because it says the deal will place unreasonable burdens on the province's wealthy energy sector. It is championing an approach to greenhouse-gas reductions that is based on much milder emission cuts.
Ms. Mellesmoen said further polling and focus-group research -- to be released shortly -- will show that Albertans support the provincial government's position.
The government-ordered poll also suggests more than half of Albertans are willing to spend an extra $500 to $2,500 a year to help cut global warming.
But Ms. Mellesmoen said the research shows Albertans want to help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions caused by energy use on their own terms -- not through higher taxes and gasoline prices, as some Kyoto measures might dictate. "They have no problem paying for a new [energy-efficient] furnace."
Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper, whose party has allied itself with Alberta against the international Kyoto agreement, was unfazed by the survey results from his home province in favour of ratifying the deal.
He said his party still believes the treaty is flawed, regardless of whether there is broad support in Alberta to fight global warming.
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