Perhaps overcome by their own overheated arguments, politicians in Canada and other G8 countries seem to have forgotten a few truths about the Kyoto accord.
It is not designed to halt global warming. Indeed, no credible scientist seriously believes it will prove more than a modest first step, even if all the accord's goals were to be met over the next 10 years.
Rather, it is intended to get things moving; to raise standards in law and push forward the public consensus here and in the developing world; to set a higher standard on which the next round of changes will be built.
To listen to posturing Canadian politicians, and to pious European leaders in Banff on the weekend, one gets the impression the document itself is a magic talisman that can wipe out thousands of jobs or save the planet.
By talking as if it is an all-or-nothing proposition, partisans give the false impression that the underlying goals themselves are in dispute, when the changing behaviour of industry even in the U.S. demonstrates they are not.
On the weekend in Banff, to satisfy political imperatives in a community that has a very "green" population and no fossil-fuel industry to worry about, European Union leaders criticized Canada for seeking new concessions. Canada wants to reduce the burden our economy will shoulder, by getting credits for shipments of low-pollution fuels, such as natural gas, to the United States. The Europeans (not to mention many environmentalists) feel Canada has already been cut enough slack with credits for its forest "carbon sinks." Alberta's environment minister, Lorne Taylor, declares the intransigence of European delegations to be a "deal breaker."
But the EU complaint, and the parallel condemnation of the U.S. for turning its back on Kyoto, implies a weak deal will be worse than one that excludes the continent that consumes six times more energy per capita than the rest of the world. And Taylor forgets that while Canadians may not want the deal honoured to the letter if it's going to cost them too much, neither do they want it broken.
In fact two-thirds of Albertans-- and fully 78 per cent of Canadians -- have told pollsters they support the principle of Kyoto. Similar numbers want their country inside the global effort on climate change, not outside.
Consider a new environmental policy on which Canada quietly followed the U.S. lead a week and a half ago -- a policy that will have precisely the sort of financial impact on consumers and industry that critics hyperventilate about on Kyoto.
The policy deals with smog-causing pollutants, rather than greenhouse gases, although the latter will also be reduced because the auto industry must adjust its production ratio in favour of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.
When combined with improvements in fuel and in performance of large vehicles such as sport-utility vehicles, the goal is to reduce car-exhaust emissions of assorted materials by 14 to 74 per cent by 2020.
No doubt, this action is less controversial in part because smog is less susceptible to arguments that it doesn't exist. But something more is at work: we are acting because over the past three decades of gradual change, public opinion in places like California now demand that something be done, whatever politicians and industry might wish.
Inevitably, the Banff gathering was divisive. Canada was caught between political imperatives in Europe and the U.S., and between its own desire to look good internationally while sacrificing as little as possible at home.
But when the dust settles, we should ratify the accord. Then, we should use it as a goad to achieve as much compliance as politically possible. Changing public standards will take care of the future.
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