With its exit from Kyoto, Canada has cemented its newfound, “principled” multilateralism. Sweet news to some. A deeply sour note to others. There was a time, of course, when things were different. We were all sickly sweet and sunny in our multilateral attachments and affections. Cheerful boy scouts some would say. There was ne’er an international agreement that we didn’t like or an international club we wouldn’t join. Those days are over.
From now on, we are going to choose our negotiating commitments and partners more carefully. At least that is the message that the Harper government is sending to Canadians and the rest of the world on Kyoto as well as the Middle East, Syria, Iran and Libya.
The opposition is crying foul — or like Green Party Leader Elizabeth May simply crying — while hurling insults across the House of Commons, as the potty-mouthed antics of Justin Trudeau attest.
It is striking how the climate change debate seems to bring out the very worst in human nature. Defenders of Kyoto treat the matter like religion. If you try to strike a note of reason in the debate, or discuss the merits of carbon taxes versus regulation, the climate change congregation will turn on you, its high priests will accuse you of being a Luddite and a heretic, and fatwas will soon follow.
Canada’s decision to throw in the Kyoto towel also grabbed us unwelcome headlines around the globe.
In the UK, where even staunch conservatives wear green, our defection was greeted with shock, horror, ridicule, and scorn. Surprisingly, however, some of those normally greener-than-green Germans applauded the moment we turned from being hypocritically unprincipled, like much of the rest of the world in our Kyoto devotions, to being un-hypocritically principled by pulling the plug.
Canada has stopped saluting a myth and confronted a harsh reality: We cannot meet our Kyoto carbon reduction commitments. We never could as a succession of Liberal and Conservative governments parading in the Emperor’s clothes amply exposed. It would be devastating to the economy and the energy sector to do so now, especially at a time when our economic fortunes are teetering and many Canadians find themselves out of work. Kyoto was cheap politics and a sham from day one.
The “inconvenient truth,” to coin Al Gore, is that whatever we do will have to be in lockstep with the Americans given the highly integrated nature of our two economies.
Harper knows that. Canadians should too.
Harper’s former environment minister, Jim Prentice, did yeoman’s service trying to work out a bilateral deal with the Americans on climate change that would have calibrated our two countries’ policies and pushed for common standards to reduce carbon emissions. Had he succeeded, North America would have seized the high ground and set an example for the rest of the world, including China and India, to follow. But the effort failed when Obama’s own energy bill cratered because Obama couldn’t sell it to the American people and the US Congress.
The good news is that abandoning the pretence of Kyoto gives Harper free rein to get serious about reducing Canada’s carbon emissions by working out bilateral, do-able deals with the Americans. These include promoting greater energy efficiency, improving unified CAFE standards, substituting natural gas — a key transitional fuel — for coal and oil, supporting the development of climate-friendly technologies for oil sands extraction, and replacing a hodge-podge of different policies and regulatory standards at state and provincial levels with a better, unified policy and approach.
Regulatory review is vital. There is a reason why you can build a coal-fired electricity generation plant for much less than the cost of building a nuclear power plant. For every 10,000 kilowatts of electricity that are generated by a nuclear-power plant, 4,000 kilowatts are in the cost of regulatory permits to build it.
If there is a fault in Harper’s strategy, it is one of timing and salesmanship. He pulled the plug on Kyoto just before the Christmas Parliamentary recess thinking that most Canadians as they head to the shopping malls won’t notice. He may be right as sugarplum fairies and Christmas carols dance in their heads.
But he has also now made us the favorite whipping boy of China and India as they shirk from their own responsibility to deal with the problem. It would have been better to bolt and run at a post-Durban moment that would have not so easily let them off the hook.
Harper also needs to do a better job of selling Canadians on where their true climate change fortunes lie — south of the border. Nowhere else or beyond.
Origin
Source: iPolitico
From now on, we are going to choose our negotiating commitments and partners more carefully. At least that is the message that the Harper government is sending to Canadians and the rest of the world on Kyoto as well as the Middle East, Syria, Iran and Libya.
The opposition is crying foul — or like Green Party Leader Elizabeth May simply crying — while hurling insults across the House of Commons, as the potty-mouthed antics of Justin Trudeau attest.
It is striking how the climate change debate seems to bring out the very worst in human nature. Defenders of Kyoto treat the matter like religion. If you try to strike a note of reason in the debate, or discuss the merits of carbon taxes versus regulation, the climate change congregation will turn on you, its high priests will accuse you of being a Luddite and a heretic, and fatwas will soon follow.
Canada’s decision to throw in the Kyoto towel also grabbed us unwelcome headlines around the globe.
In the UK, where even staunch conservatives wear green, our defection was greeted with shock, horror, ridicule, and scorn. Surprisingly, however, some of those normally greener-than-green Germans applauded the moment we turned from being hypocritically unprincipled, like much of the rest of the world in our Kyoto devotions, to being un-hypocritically principled by pulling the plug.
Canada has stopped saluting a myth and confronted a harsh reality: We cannot meet our Kyoto carbon reduction commitments. We never could as a succession of Liberal and Conservative governments parading in the Emperor’s clothes amply exposed. It would be devastating to the economy and the energy sector to do so now, especially at a time when our economic fortunes are teetering and many Canadians find themselves out of work. Kyoto was cheap politics and a sham from day one.
The “inconvenient truth,” to coin Al Gore, is that whatever we do will have to be in lockstep with the Americans given the highly integrated nature of our two economies.
Harper knows that. Canadians should too.
Harper’s former environment minister, Jim Prentice, did yeoman’s service trying to work out a bilateral deal with the Americans on climate change that would have calibrated our two countries’ policies and pushed for common standards to reduce carbon emissions. Had he succeeded, North America would have seized the high ground and set an example for the rest of the world, including China and India, to follow. But the effort failed when Obama’s own energy bill cratered because Obama couldn’t sell it to the American people and the US Congress.
The good news is that abandoning the pretence of Kyoto gives Harper free rein to get serious about reducing Canada’s carbon emissions by working out bilateral, do-able deals with the Americans. These include promoting greater energy efficiency, improving unified CAFE standards, substituting natural gas — a key transitional fuel — for coal and oil, supporting the development of climate-friendly technologies for oil sands extraction, and replacing a hodge-podge of different policies and regulatory standards at state and provincial levels with a better, unified policy and approach.
Regulatory review is vital. There is a reason why you can build a coal-fired electricity generation plant for much less than the cost of building a nuclear power plant. For every 10,000 kilowatts of electricity that are generated by a nuclear-power plant, 4,000 kilowatts are in the cost of regulatory permits to build it.
If there is a fault in Harper’s strategy, it is one of timing and salesmanship. He pulled the plug on Kyoto just before the Christmas Parliamentary recess thinking that most Canadians as they head to the shopping malls won’t notice. He may be right as sugarplum fairies and Christmas carols dance in their heads.
But he has also now made us the favorite whipping boy of China and India as they shirk from their own responsibility to deal with the problem. It would have been better to bolt and run at a post-Durban moment that would have not so easily let them off the hook.
Harper also needs to do a better job of selling Canadians on where their true climate change fortunes lie — south of the border. Nowhere else or beyond.
Origin
Source: iPolitico
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