Angry in the Great White North

Finally, some smart people making comments on climate change.

Maybe David Suzuki can go back to washing plastic bags while we start listening to Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner on the subject of climate change and the Kyoto Protocol:

It is time for a radical rethink on climate change, says a report in the journal Nature this week.

Echoing sentiments long associated with politicians such as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President George Bush, the report says it is time to ditch the Kyoto Protocol because the United Nations treaty has "failed."

Not only has the decade-old treaty not delivered cuts in global emissions of greenhouse gases which continue to soar, but it is the wrong tool for the job, say Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner at Oxford. Their commentary has top billing in the influential British science journal this week.

Heresy! And what's even worse, Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner doesn't have the decency to blame George W Bush and the United States:

Kyoto is a "symbolically important expression" of governments' concerns about climate change, they say: "But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions it has failed. It has produced no demonstrable reduction in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change." (On Monday, an international team reported humans are pumping more greenhouse gases than ever into the atmosphere, and warned the ever-increasing emissions will speed a planetary meltdown.)

"Kyoto's supporters often blame non-signatory governments, especially the United States and Australia, for its woes," say Mr. Prins and Mr. Rayner. "But the Kyoto Protocol was always the wrong tool for the nature of the job."

I mean, how can you possibly have an intelligent discussion on climate change without first blaming everything that has ever gone wrong anywhere at anytime on George W Bush?

So what is their plan? I mean, let's indulge these two just for a moment:

They say the focus should be emission reduction by the biggest emitters -- less than 20 of the 194 countries in the world are responsible for about 80 per cent of the world's emissions. China and the U.S. lead the top-20 list, which also includes Japan, India, Russia, Canada, the U.K. and several Europeans countries.

They also say carbon taxes and so-called cap-and-trade systems, which can target emissions reductions for countries and industries, cannot stimulate the level of action required. They "cannot deliver the escape velocity required to get investment in technological innovation into orbit, in time," they say.

What is needed is a massive increase in spending on clean-energy technologies, say Prins and Rayner, who want energy research and development placed on "wartime footing."

"It seems reasonable to expect the world's leading economies and emitters to devote as much money to this challenge as they currently spend on military research -- in the case of the United States about $80 billion a year."

An equal amount should go toward global adaptation efforts, they say.

OK, let me get this straight. The solution to reducing the amount of carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere is not writing cheques to third world dictatorships? But I thought scientists had conclusively proven the link between carbon dioxide emissions and collective Western guilt over imperialism. I mean, they have computer models and everything!

Instead, ignore the third world. Focus on the industrialized emitters, including industrializing countries would no longer be given a free ride. Entice them to spend money in their own countries, hiring their own scientists and engineers, and come up with their own solutions to lower emissions. And also realize that the compexity of climate change is such that carbon dioxide emissions by humans might not be the main factor, or even a factor at all, and that if it turns out that global warming is both natural and inevitable, spend money on doing what humand do best -- adapting to change.

Or you can kvetch about the link between climate change and the evils of conservatism while washing your plastic bags.

I was going to make a comment about Stephane Dion and his continued support of Kyoto, but as we all know, Stephane Dion doesn't give a fig about Kyoto or anything else. It's a Liberal thing.

Addendum: It should be said that this report gives Stephane Dion a fig leaf of sorts. The rise in emissions during his tenure as environment minister might now be written off as inevitable under the broken treaty that was the Kyoto Protocol. But it doesn't give Stephane Dion any cover for not recognizing Kyoto to be the dumb idea that it was.