The US may be the only industrialized country to refuse the binding targets of Kyoto but Canada has signed on only to do nothing much under the Liberals while emissions rose and now under the Conservatives we have a follow the US lead backwards regime. At least Australia has signed on to Kyoto and not followed the US lead as Howard did.
It seems that while the US and other developed countries want the developing countries to sign on to emission reductions they are unwilling to provide the clean technologies or cash to help them adjust to climate change requirements.
Rudd urges the United States to ratify Kyoto
The Associated PressPublished: December 5, 2007
BALI, Indonesia: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia urged the United States on Wednesday to follow his country's lead and ratify the Kyoto Protocol, as divisions emerged over what a future international climate change pact should look like.
Rudd signed documents this week to formally adopt the Kyoto accord, reversing a decade of resistance and leaving the United States as the only industrialized country to refuse its binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions.
"Our position vis-à-vis Kyoto is clear cut, and that is that all developed and developing countries need to be part of the global solution," the newly elected prime minister told the Southern Cross Broadcasting radio network in Australia.
"And therefore we do need to see the United States as a full ratification state."
His comments further put the United States on the defensive at the Bali Climate Change conference, where nearly 190 nations aim to launch two years of serious negotiations on a future regime to head off dangerous climate change.
Birth centennial of Lin Biao, once second only to Mao, a nonevent
Scientists warn that a strong new deal is needed to ward off everything from severe droughts and floods, to melting ice caps and rising sea levels, to deaths linked to heat waves and disease.
The 175-nation Kyoto Protocol of 1997 requires 36 industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of "greenhouse gases" - carbon dioxide and some other industrial, agricultural and transportation byproducts - by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
The United States says it wants to be part of the negotiations on a follow-up accord but refuses to endorse mandatory cuts in emissions favored by the European Union.
Although the Bali conference is in its early days, differences already are emerging mostly over what should go into the "Bali road map" which will lay out the subjects for discussions. Japan, for one, offered up a proposal that does not include targets, while the EU has come out with a detailed wish list that includes demands for industrialized countries to take the lead in cutting emissions.
Meanwhile, delegates and activists say that poor countries led by the Group of 77, which represents 132 mainly developing countries and China, have been kicking up a storm over demands that rich countries provide them with clean technologies and funds to adapt to the impacts of global warming.
Rudd's Labor Party swept to power last month, ending more than 11 years of conservative rule under former Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch ally of President George W. Bush.
Signing the Kyoto documents was Rudd's first official act. The policy switch was greeted by applause at the Bali conference when it opened.
Showing posts with label Kyoto Accords. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kyoto Accords. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
Kyoto framework is still best hope for the world.
Anderson is probably correct but he should have added a caveat: only if signers actually keep their promises. The Liberal government signed the Kyoto accords but let emissions rise during their tenure. The Liberals take the moral high ground and then go on to make the environment worse. The Conservatives on the other hand have been blowing hot air from the beginning and the Bush, Harper, tag team will spend the time at Bali beating developing countries into submission. When the developing nations refuse to submit or participate in a rigged fight Canada and the US can go home champions. Hot air will continue to pollute the political and real world atmosphere.
Kyoto framework is still best hope for the world
Nov 30, 2007 04:30 AM
David Anderson
The major objective of President George Bush and Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the Bali Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol that begins Monday is to replace the emission reduction Kyoto targets for the developed countries with an agreement that also includes targets for the developing countries.
Unfortunately, by abandoning the Kyoto approach of starting global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions with the developed industrial nations, Bush and Harper make the chances of getting the developing countries to accept emission reduction targets less likely, not more so.
The starting point for the developing countries is their firm and correct understanding that the increase in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the past two centuries overwhelmingly has been caused by the use of fossil fuels in the developed countries of the world.
The global warming problem thus is a problem created by those developed countries, not by them. This belief then leads to the not unreasonable conclusion that if the atmosphere now has a dangerous level of greenhouse gases, then those responsible for those emissions should be the first to step up to the plate and do something about it.
The position of Bush and Harper, by contrast, is not based on that increase in the contamination level of the past two centuries, but rather on the emissions currently occurring. It is not a two-century buildup of the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that they focus on; instead, they talk of the current rate of flow of contaminants into the atmosphere. Thus, the responsibility of the developed nations for the acute nature of the current problem is not, in their view, relevant to the current question of reducing emission levels today.
We have a dialogue of the deaf. Canada and the U.S. are talking of current flows of greenhouse gas emissions, while the developing countries are talking of accumulated stocks of greenhouse gas emissions. As long as each ignores the argument of the other, the likelihood of agreement is nil. One is talking of the contaminated pond, the other of the contaminating stream.
The Kyoto process bridged this gap by introducing a staged approach to emission reductions. The developed countries that ratified (essentially the European Union countries, Japan and Canada under the Chrétien government) agreed that the developed nations of the world should be the first to implement serious reductions. Then, after their good faith in dealing with a problem that they were responsible for had been demonstrated through significant reductions in emissions, discussions would take place on emission reduction programs for developing countries as well.
The key was overcoming the suspicion of developing countries that international greenhouse gas emission reduction programs would be used to hamper the development of their economies and their efforts to provide a better life for their citizens.
An important component of the developing countries' argument was the issue of international fairness. The atmosphere surrounding our world is equally necessary to the survival of each and every one of us. Therefore, fairness dictates that we each have an equal share of this common resource. Why then, they ask, are the per capita emissions of the developed countries so flagrantly in excess of the global averages and why are the developed countries not reducing their per capita emissions to that global average?
The question of equal share of the common global resource was sidelined by the agreement of the developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions, as the reduction targets they accepted implicitly recognized the validity of the fairness claim of the developing countries.
Without Kyoto, this fairness or moral question will come once more to the fore. Indeed, the failure to achieve the Kyoto emission reduction targets that we in the developed world committed ourselves to 10 years ago will increase the suspicion of the developing countries that emission targets are not in their interests, and make this issue even more difficult to handle than ever.
The Kyoto Protocol was the result of extremely difficult negotiations, took a very long time, was a compromise, and is by no means perfect. Unfortunately, it was and still is the best the international community, working together, has been able to come up with.
The central problem with Harper's and Bush's proposed changes for a system with emission targets for all countries is that if they return to that starting point and ignore the difficult factors that Kyoto took into account through so many painstaking compromises, they will likely achieve far less in Bali than was achieved at Kyoto. The Kyoto approach, imperfect though it may be, is still the world's best hope.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Anderson is director of the Guelph Institute of the Environment at the University of Guelph. He served from 1999 to 2004 as the federal minister responsible for the climate change file, and during that time represented Canada at the international meetings on climate change.
Kyoto framework is still best hope for the world
Nov 30, 2007 04:30 AM
David Anderson
The major objective of President George Bush and Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the Bali Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol that begins Monday is to replace the emission reduction Kyoto targets for the developed countries with an agreement that also includes targets for the developing countries.
Unfortunately, by abandoning the Kyoto approach of starting global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions with the developed industrial nations, Bush and Harper make the chances of getting the developing countries to accept emission reduction targets less likely, not more so.
The starting point for the developing countries is their firm and correct understanding that the increase in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the past two centuries overwhelmingly has been caused by the use of fossil fuels in the developed countries of the world.
The global warming problem thus is a problem created by those developed countries, not by them. This belief then leads to the not unreasonable conclusion that if the atmosphere now has a dangerous level of greenhouse gases, then those responsible for those emissions should be the first to step up to the plate and do something about it.
The position of Bush and Harper, by contrast, is not based on that increase in the contamination level of the past two centuries, but rather on the emissions currently occurring. It is not a two-century buildup of the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that they focus on; instead, they talk of the current rate of flow of contaminants into the atmosphere. Thus, the responsibility of the developed nations for the acute nature of the current problem is not, in their view, relevant to the current question of reducing emission levels today.
We have a dialogue of the deaf. Canada and the U.S. are talking of current flows of greenhouse gas emissions, while the developing countries are talking of accumulated stocks of greenhouse gas emissions. As long as each ignores the argument of the other, the likelihood of agreement is nil. One is talking of the contaminated pond, the other of the contaminating stream.
The Kyoto process bridged this gap by introducing a staged approach to emission reductions. The developed countries that ratified (essentially the European Union countries, Japan and Canada under the Chrétien government) agreed that the developed nations of the world should be the first to implement serious reductions. Then, after their good faith in dealing with a problem that they were responsible for had been demonstrated through significant reductions in emissions, discussions would take place on emission reduction programs for developing countries as well.
The key was overcoming the suspicion of developing countries that international greenhouse gas emission reduction programs would be used to hamper the development of their economies and their efforts to provide a better life for their citizens.
An important component of the developing countries' argument was the issue of international fairness. The atmosphere surrounding our world is equally necessary to the survival of each and every one of us. Therefore, fairness dictates that we each have an equal share of this common resource. Why then, they ask, are the per capita emissions of the developed countries so flagrantly in excess of the global averages and why are the developed countries not reducing their per capita emissions to that global average?
The question of equal share of the common global resource was sidelined by the agreement of the developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions, as the reduction targets they accepted implicitly recognized the validity of the fairness claim of the developing countries.
Without Kyoto, this fairness or moral question will come once more to the fore. Indeed, the failure to achieve the Kyoto emission reduction targets that we in the developed world committed ourselves to 10 years ago will increase the suspicion of the developing countries that emission targets are not in their interests, and make this issue even more difficult to handle than ever.
The Kyoto Protocol was the result of extremely difficult negotiations, took a very long time, was a compromise, and is by no means perfect. Unfortunately, it was and still is the best the international community, working together, has been able to come up with.
The central problem with Harper's and Bush's proposed changes for a system with emission targets for all countries is that if they return to that starting point and ignore the difficult factors that Kyoto took into account through so many painstaking compromises, they will likely achieve far less in Bali than was achieved at Kyoto. The Kyoto approach, imperfect though it may be, is still the world's best hope.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Anderson is director of the Guelph Institute of the Environment at the University of Guelph. He served from 1999 to 2004 as the federal minister responsible for the climate change file, and during that time represented Canada at the international meetings on climate change.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Greenpeace: Kyoto undermined by APEC rhetoric
This is from the Harper Index. As far as the Kyoto accords are concerned they have been undermined in Canada by the Liberal government's utter failure to do anything that would come close to meeting the targets. Harper has never accepted the targets and claims that meeting them would ruin the economy. So he has done nothing to meet them either.
It is not surprising that the three amigos: Bush, and his little comrades Howard and Harper, should hatch a scheme to do an end run around the Kyoto Accords. I am surprised that there seems to be a renewed acceptance of nuclear power when the costs and long term problems with waste are well known. We now will not only be renowned for being a nation that is a hewer of wood and drawer of water but an exporter of uranium and importer of toxic wastes.
Kyoto undermined by rhetoric at APEC - Greenpeace
Push for nuclear power could lead Canada to import massive amounts of waste.
SYDNEY, Australia, September 11, 2007: Rather than cleaning up Canada's and the world's environment, this week's APEC summit may have been carefully crafted to move Canada away from Kyoto commitments and closer to importing massive amounts of radioactive waste from abroad.
Stephen Harper, George W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard say the conference represented progress because it produced agreement that climate change is indeed a problem. According to environmentalists, however, this week's events were used to undermine the Kyoto process of setting targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and to send out false green signals to mask their promotion of the use of coal and nuclear energy.
"For them to claim victory coming out of APEC and to say that this is progress is simply not true," says David Martin of Greenpeace Canada. "It's a step backwards and a very bad precedent because it undermines the very real progress we're hoping to see in Bali," where the next stage of negotiations under the Kyoto protocol are being held in this November.
"In terms of the rhetoric Stephen Harper is going further than he's ever gone before," said Stephen Hazell of the Sierra Club of Canada. "He's admitting that climate change appears to be caused by human activities and that it has serious consequences. It's the strongest rhetoric on climate change we've ever seen from this government." Hazell asks, however, "Back at the ranch what are we actually doing to meet our commitments? We're not at all convinced they're on the right track in terms of regulating greenhouse gas emissions. There's way too much loose talk about how Canada's leading on this and that. The rest of the world doesn't believe it any more."
Undermining Kyoto by replacing hard targets with "aspirational goals"
Martin says Bush, Howard and Harper have agreed on an approach intended to "undermine the Kyoto protocol by moving away from hard targets toward what they call 'aspirational' goals, which typically means intensity- based targets." Looking at the example of Alberta, which adopted intensity-based targets in 2002, he says "it's very clear you can have a reduction in intensity while still having dramatic absolute increases in emissions."
The efforts to undermine Kyoto coincide with pushed for so-called "clean coal" technology and nuclear energy by the leading producers and users of these technologies, including Australia, Canada and the US. China is one of the world's largest coal producers and users, which explains that nation's interest.
Two international partnerships support this agenda. The Asia Pacific Partnership or AP6 is also known, Martin says, as the "Coal Pact." He says the declaration that's come out of APEC, is all about supporting so-called "clean coal" technology.
Canada and Australia join the US in pushing nuclear energy - and waste repatriation
At the same time comes a push for nuclear energy, led by Bush through the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) launched last year. Canada, the world's largest exporter of uranium, and Australia, the world's number two producer, are clearly supporting this program as well, says Martin. He describes GNEP as "aimed at promoting the export of reactor technology and fissile materials (i.e., uranium). And at the same time, they are packaging this as an anti-proliferation measure by pushing for the repatriation of high-level radioactive waste.
"The idea is that uranium of Canadian origin once converted into fuel and irradiated would come back to Canada," says Martin. "Existing Canadian policy actively prohibits the repatriation of nuclear waste," so this plan would represent a huge policy change and would likely prompt outcry and controversy. In turn, Martin says, there will be pressure for the "extraction of plutonium from that waste. This could start a worldwide race" to produce plutonium, which is used in making nuclear weapons. "To argue this will reduce proliferation is completely Orwellian double- talk. It will, in fact, worsen proliferation."
Martin is concerned with the political framing of climate change. "If you listen to the language Harper is using, you'd think he's found a new belief in an environmental agenda. It sounds superficially good, but when you understand this is all about undermining climate change negotiations, you begin to see it's a very duplicitous agenda. He believes direction for the strategy comes from Washington, but points to close ties between Harper and Howard as well. For years, he says, they "have been exchanging election staff and sending them back and forth and having close collegial relationships between their parties on a non-governmental level."
The Sierra Club's Hazell says conservative framing has changed. "They have changed their policy and rhetoric dramatically in a period of only a year," he says of the Harper government. It's been a stunning change, which isn't to say they're actually doing very much about climate change."
False premises of Kyoto
Martin says it also a "false premise" that developing nations had to be brought into the process by abandoning hard targets for reducing emissions. "The myth about Kyoto is that the big developing countries, namely China, India and Brazil are divorced from the process. It was always understood that the developed countries would shoulder the burden in the first and second commitment periods of Kyoto" because they have been responsible for most of the emissions. "It's important to understand," says Martin, "that the developed countries need to step up to the plate in a meaningful way in terms of emission cuts. If that doesn't happen there really will be no impetus for developing countries to start making meaningful reductions of their own."
It is not surprising that the three amigos: Bush, and his little comrades Howard and Harper, should hatch a scheme to do an end run around the Kyoto Accords. I am surprised that there seems to be a renewed acceptance of nuclear power when the costs and long term problems with waste are well known. We now will not only be renowned for being a nation that is a hewer of wood and drawer of water but an exporter of uranium and importer of toxic wastes.
Kyoto undermined by rhetoric at APEC - Greenpeace
Push for nuclear power could lead Canada to import massive amounts of waste.
SYDNEY, Australia, September 11, 2007: Rather than cleaning up Canada's and the world's environment, this week's APEC summit may have been carefully crafted to move Canada away from Kyoto commitments and closer to importing massive amounts of radioactive waste from abroad.
Stephen Harper, George W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard say the conference represented progress because it produced agreement that climate change is indeed a problem. According to environmentalists, however, this week's events were used to undermine the Kyoto process of setting targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and to send out false green signals to mask their promotion of the use of coal and nuclear energy.
"For them to claim victory coming out of APEC and to say that this is progress is simply not true," says David Martin of Greenpeace Canada. "It's a step backwards and a very bad precedent because it undermines the very real progress we're hoping to see in Bali," where the next stage of negotiations under the Kyoto protocol are being held in this November.
"In terms of the rhetoric Stephen Harper is going further than he's ever gone before," said Stephen Hazell of the Sierra Club of Canada. "He's admitting that climate change appears to be caused by human activities and that it has serious consequences. It's the strongest rhetoric on climate change we've ever seen from this government." Hazell asks, however, "Back at the ranch what are we actually doing to meet our commitments? We're not at all convinced they're on the right track in terms of regulating greenhouse gas emissions. There's way too much loose talk about how Canada's leading on this and that. The rest of the world doesn't believe it any more."
Undermining Kyoto by replacing hard targets with "aspirational goals"
Martin says Bush, Howard and Harper have agreed on an approach intended to "undermine the Kyoto protocol by moving away from hard targets toward what they call 'aspirational' goals, which typically means intensity- based targets." Looking at the example of Alberta, which adopted intensity-based targets in 2002, he says "it's very clear you can have a reduction in intensity while still having dramatic absolute increases in emissions."
The efforts to undermine Kyoto coincide with pushed for so-called "clean coal" technology and nuclear energy by the leading producers and users of these technologies, including Australia, Canada and the US. China is one of the world's largest coal producers and users, which explains that nation's interest.
Two international partnerships support this agenda. The Asia Pacific Partnership or AP6 is also known, Martin says, as the "Coal Pact." He says the declaration that's come out of APEC, is all about supporting so-called "clean coal" technology.
Canada and Australia join the US in pushing nuclear energy - and waste repatriation
At the same time comes a push for nuclear energy, led by Bush through the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) launched last year. Canada, the world's largest exporter of uranium, and Australia, the world's number two producer, are clearly supporting this program as well, says Martin. He describes GNEP as "aimed at promoting the export of reactor technology and fissile materials (i.e., uranium). And at the same time, they are packaging this as an anti-proliferation measure by pushing for the repatriation of high-level radioactive waste.
"The idea is that uranium of Canadian origin once converted into fuel and irradiated would come back to Canada," says Martin. "Existing Canadian policy actively prohibits the repatriation of nuclear waste," so this plan would represent a huge policy change and would likely prompt outcry and controversy. In turn, Martin says, there will be pressure for the "extraction of plutonium from that waste. This could start a worldwide race" to produce plutonium, which is used in making nuclear weapons. "To argue this will reduce proliferation is completely Orwellian double- talk. It will, in fact, worsen proliferation."
Martin is concerned with the political framing of climate change. "If you listen to the language Harper is using, you'd think he's found a new belief in an environmental agenda. It sounds superficially good, but when you understand this is all about undermining climate change negotiations, you begin to see it's a very duplicitous agenda. He believes direction for the strategy comes from Washington, but points to close ties between Harper and Howard as well. For years, he says, they "have been exchanging election staff and sending them back and forth and having close collegial relationships between their parties on a non-governmental level."
The Sierra Club's Hazell says conservative framing has changed. "They have changed their policy and rhetoric dramatically in a period of only a year," he says of the Harper government. It's been a stunning change, which isn't to say they're actually doing very much about climate change."
False premises of Kyoto
Martin says it also a "false premise" that developing nations had to be brought into the process by abandoning hard targets for reducing emissions. "The myth about Kyoto is that the big developing countries, namely China, India and Brazil are divorced from the process. It was always understood that the developed countries would shoulder the burden in the first and second commitment periods of Kyoto" because they have been responsible for most of the emissions. "It's important to understand," says Martin, "that the developed countries need to step up to the plate in a meaningful way in terms of emission cuts. If that doesn't happen there really will be no impetus for developing countries to start making meaningful reductions of their own."
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