Quote:
Originally Posted by Bend it like Bourgeois
3 fundamental differences, - economy, geography, and weather.
Their economies do not require emissions growth to prosper. As you said, they disconnected previously, and good on them. We have not. Our economies are still built around emissions intensive energy. Nothing we need be proud of, but it's a fact.
These countries also have the benefit of much higher population densities and smaller geography. Auto use, transit, logisitics...all of these are huge emissions drivers and their ability to control them without changing their lifestyles or economies is much greater.
Finally, most of them do not need to heat their homes and buildings, or at least nowhere near the way we do.
This I'd agree with. For image and ego reasons we wanted to hang with the cool kids promising lower emissions, but unlike them we had no hope of getting there without massive change.
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Point 1: Your logic, and those that follow, simply does not work, IMO. As stated, these economies used nuclear and other non-GHG sources BEFORE 1990. Reduction cannot be made from something that was not polluting before 1990, ergo this actually made it harder for them to meet targets. We had the luxury of eliminating these sources (which Ontario has started) making targets far more technically achievable (not economically the way I would do things, but very physically achievable).
Point 2: Same problem in your logic. These things were true before 1990, so unless they suddenly adopted huge amounts of public transit that they did not previously make use of, the density provides no advantage. Interestingly, transport is one of the few sectors Europe has seen growth in emissions from b/c they already used public transit and fuel efficient cars prior to 1990. Again, since our fleet is so much less efficient than theirs, we had tremendous room for improvement, yet somehow fleet-wide efficiency has not improved at all since 1990 in North America.
Point 3: Again, same problem. Unless their climate changed after 1990, this was already true and embedded in their emissions. Further, average house size in North America has continued to grow despite falling family sizes, i.e. we are making negative progress.
Point 4: by Blankall I believe: Spain and most of much of Eastern Europe are part of the EU-27, and the EU-27 has actually reduced emissions by more than the original EU. Spain has increased emissions, but reductions in other countries have more than offset it. Additionally, manufacturing has and continues to take a beating in Canada. Interestingly, it is the poorer countries
who used to rely on crappy technology like dirty inefficient coal that have made the most improvement.
Point 5: population (not sure who's point): first one I think has merit. Higher population should equal more emissions, and Europe has seen very little growth relative to Canada.
Point 6: Oil and gas sector - from what I've seen floating around, this sector has accounted for 28% of the increase in Cdn emissions since 1990. It will be interesting if the growth rate drops at all with the new policies, because IMO the industry could be much cleaner with very little real cost (not sure how much, but I've worked on a few efficiency projects with smaller companies that squashed projects showing IIR's of 15% to 20% - with an actual policy in place I'm sure these will now show even higher returns).