Quote:
Originally Posted by FireFly
Glad you put forward such compelling reasons for us to not reduce our emissions...
"But China still pollutes! And they do it worse than us!"
"But it might hurt our economy!"
"Oh. It worked for Britain? Well Britain is different so we can't learn anything from that."
You sound like you're whining because you might have to replace your windows and lightbulbs. If you really don't care about the environment, don't change your ways. But your reasons that Canada should not try and affect change are lame. Again, we are all responsible for the state of the environment today, and we are all responsible for cleaning it up. So what if Kyoto has no teeth? It's all we've got. Until there's something better, (and feel free to propose it,) it's the only targets we have and even then, it's not enough.
FYI the same thing happened when CFCs were banned. The first round of global talks had no teeth, the second round enacted change. |
I agree with Shawnski, frankly this is lunacy.
Canada can't be compared with the UK, period. They have 60 million people in a space smaller than Edmonton to the US border. almost 1/3 of their population within the Greater London metro area. There are luxuries to being centralized like that. They are also not a primary industry based country, and that is the source of our pollution.
What a lot of people don't get is that Canada is still growing, while Europe, for lack of a better word, is maturing. If China is a developing nation, then so is Canada, and if Harper had a spine, he'd be taking a hard line on that. The solution here is smart growth, and smart environmental legislation. Banning incandescant lightbulbs is a good start. They are very inefficient and have a relatively short lifespan anyway. Same with inefficient appliances, vehicles, etc. All new models should adhere to a certain code. Nothing wrong with that, and it doesn't screw the economy.
Where it gets stupid are these "absolute limits" on emission. They are essentially saying, "whoa now, no more growth." I thought the original Conservative concept was to have emission caps based on growth. All while we eat the dust of the non-compliant nations, and those who are built for Kyoto. Adherence at the cost of our competitive advantage.
I also thought Kyoto enaction would cost $100 billion... I guess we are learning what a promise from the PCs, err I mean "Conservative Party of Canada" means. Preston Manning must be pissed, all his effort and the "united right" is still the arrogant, median vote chasing, ideal-free Progressive Conservative party of years past.