"Harper blamed the previous Liberal government for years of foot-dragging and said it is now impossible for Canada to meet Kyoto without destroying its economy."
Here, our Prime Minister's recent remarks in Germany ahead of the G8 Summit.
Basically, he along with President Bush and others, is cleverly using the unimplementability (my word) of the Kyoto Protocol, the increase in emissions of GG's around the globe, and the relatively close expiry date (2012) of the protocol to effectively kill it. "Post Kyoto" is the phrase now used by leaders who either never wanted anything to do with it in the first place, or whose countries failed meet its standards.
It is interesting (or sad) to note that climate change and the environment in general is not really a pressing issue for Harper, who once wrote the Kyoto Protocol is a socialist scheme. Back then he let this fact be known openly, until the environment became such a huge topic for Canadians that it took on massive political significance. So then, the government pieced together some proposals from the previous Liberal administration that they trashed, and presented them as their own.
But it doesn't take much to reveal the wolf in sheep's clothing, and Harper did just that in his speech when he argued intensity based targets are what can bring the world together on climate change...and here is where I have a problem. When you talk climate change, you are talking about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Intensity based targets (increasing production per unit energy used) are about efficiency. So a little more efficient use of energy will reduce emissions only if production is somewhat stable. Since no one expects the Canadian economy to stop growing, I think few people will agree that intensity based targets will bring down emissions.
Having Harper tout this as a possible way to reach even his own government's emission goals, much less to the developed world, is well...silly. And he knows it...but hey, in Canada's political climate, you have to have something to show your environmentally aware, even if it means dressing up as a sheep.
