Quote:
Originally Posted by Regorium
I'm saying that our impact is understandable, not negligble. We are a gigantic country, which is intrinsically inefficient. We are a frigid climate, requiring an extreme amount of heating. Our main industries are dirty - manufacturing, oil and gas, mining and forestry. It is completely expected that our per capita emissions are higher.
On a personal level, I guarantee that I have a smaller footprint than most people. I live in a highrise, walk to work, and drive about 3000km a year. I care a lot personally and have adjusted my lifestyle to minimize my carbon. The oil and gas industry (and the other dirty industries), from what I've seen, also work extremely hard from both a regulatory and mandated from pmanagement to minimize emissions. We are intrinsically inefficient on the emissions front and I don't think we should have to sacrifice even more.
|
This is the point I was trying to get across. Canada is a frozen-ass country. It takes a ton of energy to keep Canadians from dying. It takes a ton more to provide a certain comfort level.
As I said in my original post with the chart, we should all be concerned with the environment, and heavy industry should be held to very high standards to keep our wilderness as clean as possible. We should all be doing our part individually as well, since we have the collective knowledge of environmental stewardship.
However, I think some politicians and voters think we should keep the 'tar' sands in the ground, and just not develop them, and I think that is wrong. Again, in the grand scheme of things, the greenhouse gas problem isn't going to be solved in Canada, or in Northern Alberta. We need to keep perspective.
Why should Canada sign a G7 mandate, a one-size-fits-all piece of law that would punish Canada, but reward others? Canada I would argue already does a lot solving worlds issues, and it's time others did the same. Yes, the per capita emissions are high, but Canada doesn't exactly have a sub-tropic climate.