Canada won't confirm it's withdrawing from Kyoto

[_eh]

Source: Reuters

OTTAWA | Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:37pm EST

(Reuters) - Canada dismissed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change on Monday as a thing of the past, but declined to confirm a media report it will formally pull out of the international treaty before the end of this year.

Although the right-of-center Conservative government walked away from its Kyoto obligations years ago, a formal withdrawal would deal a symbolic blow to global talks to save the agreement, which opened in South Africa on Monday.

Canada says it backs a new international deal to cut global emissions of greenhouses bases but insists it has to cover all nations, including China and India, which are not bound by Kyoto's current targets. Although Japan and Russia share Canada's view, and the United States never ratified Kyoto, no nation has yet formally renounced the treaty.

"Kyoto is the past," Environment Minister Peter Kent told reporters in Ottawa, describing the decision by Canada's previous Liberal government to sign on to the protocol as "one of the biggest blunders they made."

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/28/us-carbon-canada-kyoto-idUSTRE7AR1MO20111128

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Tarsand Profits 1, Environment 0

[FarCenter]

1. Kyoto is dead

[Bragi]

2. The Koch brothers own the Harper government /nt

[Yo_Mama]

3. In fairness, a new protocol that doesn't include 2.4 billion people

does seem to be pointless. Kyoto is old - China now uses more energy than the US, and on net emits more carbon per BTU.

http://www.iea.org/co2highlights/co2highlights.pdf

On page 58 (internal), you can see a table of total world CO2 emissions. The non-OECD total is about a third higher than the OECD total, and while the OECD total grew 8.2% between 1990 and 2009, the non-OECD total grew 60.3%.

Out of a world total of 29,549.3 million tonnes of CO2 emitted in 2009, and percent of total:
China: 7,085.0 (24%)
India: 1,630.0 (5.5%)
US: 5,290.0 (18%)
OECD Europe: 3,818.7 (13%)

During the 1990-2009 period, US carbon emissions grew 8.8%. OECD Europe's shrank 5.4%. China's grew 195%. India's grew 175.9%. These stats are only through 2009 - very soon China and India's annual carbon emissions will beat those of the US and OECD Europe added together, if they haven't already done so, which is very possible.

There is not a shadow of a chance that a new protocol excluding China can do anything to slow the rate of world CO2 emissions. It seems likely that the Kyoto Protocol resulted in HIGHER world carbon emissions, because one of the results was to shift production (by making energy more costly) to economies that emit far more carbon in production. That helped bring a lot of people out of poverty, which was beneficial, but world CO2 emissions were doomed to grow pretty rapidly as a result.

Of course growing economies will increase energy consumption! It's not that these countries are criminal, it's just that they are relatively poorer. But still, I think Canada is right. If we care about reducing world CO2 consumption, Kyoto is not the answer.

[Lint Head]

4. Kyoto is dead and the atmosphere of the earth is dying.