Angry in the Great White North

From National Newswatch, we are led to this remarkable story in the Toronto Star about how Canada was never ready to sign on to Kyoto, and how the government knew it:

The previous Liberal government ratified the Kyoto Protocol knowing Canada wasn't ready to take the tough measures needed to address climate change and would likely miss the deadlines for reducing emissions, says a top adviser to former prime minister Jean Chretien.

Eddie Goldenberg said in a speech today that the Chretien government nevertheless signed and ratified the international pact because it was an "absolutely necessary" first step in galvanizing public opinion to meet the global warming challenge.

Goldenberg was a senior adviser to Chretien when the Liberal government signed onto Kyoto in 1998 and formally ratified it in 2002.

Likely miss the deadlines? All this trouble over something that was fantasy to start with?

Still, Goldenberg said, the government forged ahead because "we knew that signing and ratifying Kyoto when we did was absolutely necessary to prepare public opinion for the actions that would have to come in the future to address climate change.

Well, that worked out well, didn't it? Alberta is seething, and most of the rest of the country is willing to do something as long as it doesn't mean driving less or paying more or any other sort of inconvenience.

But here's what is really amusing. The targets are fundamentally a fiction. People think that this reduction of emissions to 6% below the 1990 levels is somehow dictated by complicated computer models. If Canada can do that, and Belgium can do this, and so on, then the climate will change.

Not at all. And I don't mean the science is flawed (which it is). I mean that science had nothing to do with the targets.

The targets were set by the ego of the single largest source of hot air in Canada at the time, Prime Minister Jean Chretien, and his kneejerk anti-Americanism:

A number of panelists bemoaned the lack of political will and committed leadership among national decision-makers. [Former aide to Stockwell Day, Tim] Kennedy noted that then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien put forward a target of six percent below 1990 emissions levels based not on economic considerations—the government originally proposed a target zero to three percent below 1990 levels—but on political ones: “Chretien wanted to do better that the United States, which had proposed a target of five percent.”

This is confirmed by Cathy Wilkinson, who was part of the Kyoto delegation Canada had sent:

It was only a few months later that the Canadian delegation arrived at Kyoto. The delegation numbered 80 from government and many more from industry and environmental groups. Cathy Wilkinson was a senior advisor, "We negotiated for 72 hours straight...it was a very intense period, the first time in history that we were going to fundamentally change the direction of how we make greenhouse gases."

It was important for Jean Chretien to be seen as an environmental leader. So despite the secret memo warning of serious political problems he gave the order to commit Canada to emissions to 6% below 1990 levels. Wilkinson remembers, "Everyone was surprised that we had a number that moved us on a path to meaningful reductions. Some people in the room were ecstatic, others shocked and concerned." Insiders say the decision had less to do with science or economics, than the with the Prime Minister's desire to be keeping up with the US.

So all this is about making Jean Chretien look good?! How stupid are we to keep going on this path?

In fact, Eddie Goldenberg thinks that there is more than enough stupidity when it comes to Kyoto rhetoric coming out of the Liberal Party today, and that it has to stop:

Still, Goldenberg chided Liberal MP Mark Holland for his "unfortunate comment" about shutting down the oil sands.

"It might be easy political rhetoric but it ignores one fundamental reality, namely that Canada for a long time to come will need oil sands production and lots of it. Our economy and our standard of living depend on it."

Recently, a private members bill has passed that is designed to compel the Conservative government to somehow comply with the Kyoto targets. Given that the basis of that bill, the Kyoto Protocol and Canada's obligations under it, have been revealed to be a fiction utterly unrelated to any science, even bad science, it seems to me that the right thing to do is to declare the Kyoto Protocol a complete sham and to withdraw from it.

There is no reason to believe that Canada's success or failure will have any impact whatsoever on the problem of global warming, even if it exists. The numbers have been revealed to be entirely arbitrary and baseless, revealed by the very people who set the numbers in first place. That smacks of deception, and no legitimate law or agreement or contract can be based on a lie.