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Front Page » Archive » Vol
2 No 48 » here
Clouds converge over Kyoto
Industry ratchets up its smoke machine, and the international environmental
protection agreement falls victim to deliberate confusion
by Kevin Potvin
The Republic
It will be almost impossible now to understand what "Kyoto Accord" means.
Members of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP)--big multinational
oil firms--have anted-up for a multi-million dollar sweeping public relations media
campaign to convince Canadians to oppose Kyoto. As a result, it will become all that
much more difficult to learn anything of value in the media. CAPP represents 160 Canadian
oil and gas companies who together produce 95% of Canada's carbon fuel output. Canada
is the world's fourth largest producer of carbon fuels.
A glance at big daily Canadian newspaper headlines illustrates what a well-financed
corporate communications strategy can achieve: "Oil patch executive warns of
'federal carbon police' enforcing Kyoto Accord" (National Post); "Kyoto
Accord or Kyoto discord?" (Canadian Newswire Service); "Kyoto Accord
will destroy Ontario jobs" (Toronto Sun); "Kyoto Accord could kill
$3.5 billion oilsands megaproject" (Waterloo Record): "Kyoto drive
'blind leading the blind'" (Winnipeg Sun); "Kyoto Accord needs changes"
(Vancouver Sun); "Kyoto impact could shutter Ipsco mill" (National
Post); "Kyoto a threat, says EnCana" (Halifax Daily News); "PetroCan
chief slams Kyoto" (Globe and Mail). These headlines are all drawn from
just a three day period late in September. That, as they say in the PR racket, is
a high hit count.
The proponents of the Kyoto Accord are just as coordinated and prolific, in the realm
of the less-financed organizations--the Internet. There, thousands of hits are available
if one is looking for reasons to support the Kyoto Accord. But if one is still left
wondering what exactly the Kyoto Accord is, well, in the immortal words of US Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "There are things we know that we know, there are
things we know that we don't know, and then there are things we don't know that we
don't know." Whoever said acid flashbacks are a myth?
The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
released on December 10 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, is an agreement among the signing national
governments to encourage reductions in carbon emissions by the industries operating
in their jurisdictions. It was established at the Montreal Protocol on Substances
that Deplete the Ozone Layer, in 1987, that carbon emissions contribute to so-called
greenhouse gases, the accumulation of which in the atmosphere is suspected by a great
majority of meteorological scientists to cause distressing changes to the globe's
climate. Carbon emissions occur wherever fossil fuels, like oil, gasoline, and natural
gas, are burned for energy. By encouraging industries around the world to burn less
fossil fuels, it is hoped that negative changes to the planet's climate will not accelerate
so fast.
Changes to the globe's climate are causing a huge range of economic and social costs
around the world. Regions once well-irrigated by rain water are experiencing unprecedented
droughts, and other regions are experiencing massive flooding from too much rain.
Ocean currents are being altered by the redistribution of rain water and temperature
changes, so that fish stocks crucial to the food supply for a majority of the world's
population are migrating away, or being migrated upon by new predators. A generalized
warming of the globe's atmosphere seems to be causing the polar ice caps to melt which
may flood low-lying coastal areas of the planet, which describes the homes of about
two-thirds of humanity. A South Pacific island, home to about 3,000 people, has recently
disappeared under the waves.
It seems clear that the world must reduce its carbon emissions, the same way it earlier
reduced its emissions of aerosols that were discovered to be causing the giant holes
in the ozone layer over the poles.
Since the atmosphere does not respect national borders, it does no one country any
good to reduce its own carbon emissions alone--its climate will degrade anyway if
other countries do nothing. Thus, the Kyoto Accord was born: Its an agreement by all
signing countries to collectively lower the world's overall carbon emissions.
All sorts of formulae were suggested to arrive at a fair assessment of how much each
country should reduce their emissions by, and how fast. Modern industrialized countries
were expected to reduce their emissions more both because they generated much more
emissions on a per capita basis, and because they are more wealthy and hence more
able to shoulder a larger burden. Thus, Canada is expected, if it signs on, to reduce
it's emissions by about 25% by 2012--to a level of emissions 5% less than what it
generated in 1990.
However, it struck the national governments who negotiated the Kyoto Accord as too
draconian to simply start shutting down polluting industries or bar the establishment
of new ones to help reduce the nation's emissions. The solution is found in so-called
Carbon Credits. With this new neo-currency, a nation does not need to reduce its own
emissions at all, or even stop their growth. Instead, the nation can create what are
known as "carbon sinks" to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere,
and be awarded credits to use against its total measured emissions. A forest is a
carbon sink, for example, because trees soak up carbon from the air.
Or, a nation can buy credits from other nations to use in its own accounting, where
other nations have succeeded in reducing their emissions so far that they have room
below their assessed allotment, and can sell some credits. Or, still, a nation can
finance some carbon reducing measure in another nation, or a carbon sink in another
nation, and gain the credits earned there to use against its own emissions, to bring
its accounting of carbon emissions below its assessed allotment.
It's a good plan, because it creates huge incentives for nations to continue reducing
their carbon emissions even though they've already achieved their necessary reductions,
since they can earn cash for doing so. The overall goal is to reduce the world's total
carbon emissions, and carbon credits create the prospect of a booming economy in technology
aimed at just that.
The members of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers absolutely hate the
Kyoto Accord for the simple reason that the whole point of the treaty is to reduce
the use of their products: oil and gas. Thus, it is their plan, judging by their latest
public relations gambit, to confuse the public about what Kyoto is about, to make
staggering claims about the economic and social costs of the treaty, to claim that
the treaty won't actually do any good, and to cry that it is unfair to their member
companies.
In actual fact, Kyoto is not very confusing at all, its costs are not great and are
anyway likely to be offset by new economies in clean technology, it will do a little
bit of good and, once established, can be built on to do a lot more good, and is only
unfair to petroleum companies because petroleum companies produce carbon fuels, which
are the stated target of the Kyoto Accord.
The Prime Minister has said Canada will sign on to the treaty by the end of this
fall, and the Alberta Premier (Alberta is home to most of Canada's petroleum producers)
has said he will fight against Kyoto all the way--and some industry spokespeople have
raised the spectre of Alberta's separation from Canada over the issue.
Most citizens, when they understand the Kyoto Accord and the issue of carbon emissions
and global climate change, support the treaty. Most industry representatives are opposed
to the treaty. The governments of Alberta and Canada are, of course, democratically
elected to represent citizens, and industries are not allowed to vote in elections
for the plain reason that governments are not intended to represent industry.
There can be no compromise on the issue of Canada's ratification of the Kyoto Accord--the
nation either signs on or it doesn't. Therefore, the outcome of the Kyoto Accord in
Canada represents a rare, very clear opportunity for Canadians to measure the degree
to which corporate interests have infiltrated their national government. If Canada
signs, democracy here will be seen to be in good shape. If Canada doesn't, democracy
will be seen to be dangerously subverted. Of course, a national government responsive
to the demands of industry over the commands of its citizens is no national government
at all, and so a loss here, over Kyoto, pretty much spells the end of Canadian national
government in any meaningful sense of the term. In other words, it's overtime in game
seven of the finals, next goal wins, and Chrétien has the puck in the corner.
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