As we all know, the Kyoto Protocol, so much loved by Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion that he named his dog Kyoto, exempts countries like India and China from having any emission targets.

Why?

I'm going to focus on India.

The reasoning is based on the idea that the industrialized world polluted first.  To apply limitations to India would cheat it of its chance to complete a transition to industrialization. 

It is also a matter of per capita emissions.  Every Canadian emits many times more carbon dioxide in the course of a day compared to an Indian.

That makes us bad people and so we must be punished by the Kyoto Protocol.

But really, I wonder about that.  I mean, if we're passing moral judgments here, sheer honesty ought to play a role.

Consider this from India's state oil company, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation:

ONGC participates in the Green Movement with responsibility towards society and the world. We bring you four stories on this positive approach of ONGC.

Long before ecology became the refrain of the global song at Stockholm and Rio, the ancient Indian heritage had already provided a specious spiritual home for the environmental ethos. India has, throughout trackless centuries, provided an ample expense of friendly space for an open and ongoing discourse of ideas. The relics and traditions established the principles of ecological harmony centuries ago-not because the world was perceived as heading for an imminent environmental disaster or destruction, nor because of any immediate utilitarian exigency, but through its quest for spiritual and physical symbiosis, synthesized in a system of ethical awareness and moral responsibility.

Well then.  I'd say India doesn't need Kyoto.  As implied, the Kyoto Protocol is really for people who are not in tune with the environment and need to make up for lost time.  In India, they've had "trackless centuries" of Kyoto-like love for the environment.

Is this marketing gibberish developed by some ad agency?  No.  It is an official government position, since ONGC is a state agency.  As a schedule 'A' industry, the oil industry was nationalized and made the exclusive responsibility of the state in 1956.  Since then there has been some liberalization.  Today, the government of India controls only 84.11% of ONGC.

Still, I think that counts as a state-run concern.

Spiritual and physical symbiosis.  Want to see some examples of spiritual and physical symbiosis?  Here are some of ONGC's operation near Sivasagar.  As a state operation, the rigs, the land, equipment, everything, is government property.  It would explain the appearance of the soldier in the fifth photograph.

You can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Yes, those are open industrial waste ponds, adjoining rice paddies.  Yes, this is monsoon country where they are guaranteed that flooding will happen every year.

No, this is not a picture after a monsoon.  Just a good rain, like the sort that normally happen in this part of the world.

Drums rusted out, on their sides, three-quarters buried in the mud.  A weird mix of oil and solvents and other chemicals in open pools, leeching through the mud walls into the farm waters beyond.  The potentially lethal mix of chemicals never meant to be combined sourced from a combination of open and damaged piping and a refuse pile of water-sodden bags in which the chemicals had originally been shipped (sixth photo from the top).

This is not an abandoned site, but an actual working drillhead.

This is the sort of thing that is forgotten in the wise decision by people like Stephane Dion, Al Gore, and David Suzuki to accuse countries like Canada or the United States of polluting the planet.

Want to see a North American operation?  I mean, an oil drilling operation is a dirty and smelly place, right? 

It's a bit of exaggeration, but not much, to say that you could eat off these.  Yes, these are actual working rigs.

The operations themselves are far more safety conscious, both for the employees and for the environment in general.  Safety meetings every shift change, regular sampling of air and water, shutdown procedures enforced in case of incidents that require it.

Remember those unfortunate ducks that drowned on the Syncrude tailings pond in Alberta?  Half-expected the International Court at the Hague to get involved, the way people were carrying on.

The company promised to fix the problem.  But then how can you trust Syncrude to care about ducks:

Greenpeace called the apology "hollow," saying it expects a firm commitment from the company to change its practices.

Syncrude said it would take the problem seriously, but of course they're lying.  How can Greenpeace tell?  Well, for one thing, Syncrude doesn't have a tradition going back "trackless centuries" of "principles of ecological harmony".

Right.

Syncrude is the villain that Stephane Dion wants to smash with his carbon tax, using the money to fund...what?  Massive shifts of wealth via carbon credits to places like India?  Just to appease the Kyoto crowds?

Livestock near the ONGC facility fell over dead after drinking the run-off.  We're not talking about a few wild ducks that landed on a waste area on company property, but domesticated animals on designated farmland drinking what was supposed to safe water.  The response from the company?  The animals had drowned in the monsoon rain.  But what about that dead animal on the hill?  Quite the monsoon for the waters to have risen that far up.

That was the conversation between the person who took these photos and officials from the state-owned ONGC.  A Canadian firm working under contract has concluded that oil operations in India are environmental nightmares.  Money is not spent on anything but the most rudimentary maintenance.  Equipment runs, but anything related to emission controls and toxic waste managment and such are ignored, considered unnecessary.  A filter is clogged?  Remove the filter.

The Canadian firm is trying to extricate itself from the contract, having seen what a nightmare this is.  It can't even complain to the government, because this is a government operation. 

The government of India, on the other hand, seems to be happy to beat the Kyoto drum.  It suits its goals perfectly.  Not only does the focus on carbon dioxide (not actually a pollutant) mean that the media is passing over the truly terrible environmental destruction that is happening in India, the Kyoto Protocol is designed to move money from clean operations like the ones you see in North America to the state-owned filth-ridden chemical horrors in India and elsewhere in the third world.

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have taken the position that global environmental treaties mean nothing if they don't actually include polluting countries like India.  I'd say he has a point.