The big Kyoto buts

>> Environmentalists applaud ratification despite serious loopholes

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

What a happy day it was for environmentalists and their supporters last week, when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien announced to the world that Canada would indeed be signing the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. So the U.S. won’t, and Alberta’s oil-flunky government’s spitting mad. Big deal. The rest of the world can move right along without them, right?
Well, hold on. Kyoto remains an iffy deal for a lot of reasons, and opposition is still strong enough to make for one big constitutional battle between certain provinces and the federal government. Besides that, loopholes remain that will give some industries, including some large ones in Quebec, the right to skirt around some of the tougher restrictions.
While green types remain on the whole happy with Chrétien’s decision, serious concerns remain to be hammered out. Below are some of the thoughts prominent Canadian environmentalists shared with the Mirror on the future of Kyoto—and Canada.

David Suzuki, chairman of the David Suzuki Foundation, scientist, environmentalist, writer and broadcaster
I’d say, at last Chrétien has taken concrete, positive steps about concerns towards the environment. But it upsets me to see the admittedly expected strong opposition from the oil industry—it’s exactly like the position the tobacco industry has taken. It also disturbs me that [Canadian Alliance leader] Stephen Harper not only opposes Kyoto, but that he refutes the science. He’s back in the dinosaur era. Even [Alberta Premier] Ralph Klein and George W. Bush have accepted it. Harper is just totally out of it.

Klein’s position [of making economic arguments against ratification] is reprehensible. It flies in the face of the evidence, and he’s speaking in total ignorance. Any thoughtful individual, including Klein and Bush, understands that global warming is taking place. His argument is like that of the southern states prior to the American civil war, that the economy would collapse if they did away with slavery. They fought against doing the right thing by using economics.

Sidney Ribaux, general coordinator, Ecological Transportation and Energy Efficiency, Equiterre
Considering that I’ve been working on this for 10 years, I’m very happy. It’s one of the few important things that has come out of the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development. And if it takes 50,000 people to come to a summit for a week to get countries like Russia, Canada and Poland to ratify the treaty, then it was worth it. It is a very first step, but it is a crucial one.

The Kyoto Protocol, according to the experts and the scientific debates, is not a perfect treaty. Canada has pushed hard for some leeway, and most people in the environmental movement can agree that loopholes and dangers remain. But the fact is, Kyoto is a step in the right direction, and will force Canada to come up with an action plan.

But even a huge reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases won’t begin to solve the problem of climate change. It will, however, have a positive impact on the economy, health and the problems surrounding urbanization.

John Bennett, director, Atmosphere and Energy, the Sierra Club of Canada
I feel that we’ve finally got through to the politicians. It’s really an essential step, and without it we would never have gone anywhere. When Kyoto was agreed upon in 1997, we called it a baby step, but it is an essential first step.

The first thing we have to do is sop up the waste within the system. We have to concentrate on efficiency and conservation. Things will probably cost a little bit more, but will last 10 times longer. We can get the technology distributed to reduce the amount of energy we use and to plug the holes in the system. We can build buildings in the future that will use 10 per cent of the energy buildings use now. For buildings that already exist, we can renovate them and operate using only 50 per cent of the energy they use today.

Another thing Kyoto tells us is to reinvest in public transit. The federal government has invested no money to the cities for public transportation, and we are the only industrialized country in the world in which this is the case. As it stands now, if 10 per cent of the population that uses their cars daily left their cars at home, they would crash the public transportation system because it simply isn’t equipped to deal with that many more users. We have to improve transportation infrastructure to improve our options.

Steven Guilbeault, director, Greenpeace Quebec and Climate Change Campaigner for Greenpeace Canada
Canada was very slow off the mark. A lot of time was wasted, the Canadian Association of Petrol Producers say they weren’t consulted, Alberta was saying it wasn’t consulted—but there was constant consultation. Alberta is clearly lying about this.

Alberta is really reacting to lobby groups and the interests of the most regressive companies, like Esso and Talisman. I don’t see Alberta coming around in this lifetime. This creates a dangerous precedent for the concept of confederation, if the federal government passes a law and the provinces won’t respect it.
With all the loopholes and the trading that had to happen, the targets are not as ambitious as we would have wanted. Still, it allows an international infrastructure to reach the goals set down by the protocol, and will hopefully lead to a 50 per cent reduction within the next few decades. To me, the objectives are not what’s so important, but rather it’s the framework to achieve them now coming into existence that matters.

Daniel Green, executive director, Société pour vaincre la pollution
Of course it’s good news, but the devil’s in the details. The bottom line is that we would have preferred more substance over bluster…

The Quebec government thinks it’s lucky because it has a lot of hydro, but there are three areas of concern. First, it’s unclear if these mega-hydro projects, like the Prince Rupert project in James Bay, won’t produce greenhouse gases. When you flood boreal forests and taiga, you do produce methane. It’s no secret. You also remove the carbon sinks.

Second, Quebec is going to produce electricity in Valleyfield that will be used to burn natural gas, which produces greenhouse gases. And third, the aluminium and methane industries both use vast amounts of chemicals that produce extreme amounts of greenhouse gases.

It will be interesting to see, when push comes to shove, how addressing these issues will affect Quebec. The Quebec government is kidding itself if it thinks that it has a free ride because of Kyoto. :