The Post has an article on how the opposition from the provinces on Kyoto is piling up.  The provinces, who seem to be more realistic on the immediate losses, will make sure this deal doesn’t get implemented.

‘Ego-driven’ Chr?tien dismisses call for first ministers meeting on climate treaty

Chretien doesn’t like working with others:

“What we’re being told is, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, we’re doing this anyway,’” he said. “I don’t think that is the way to treat this issue. It’s too serious for that. … The federal government is thumbing its nose at the federal and territorial leadership.”

Even fellow plain talker Klein can’t get through to him:

In a speech to Calgary’s Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Mr. Klein said he can’t have an intelligent conversation with Mr. Chr?tien about climate change, describing how the Prime Minister talked about how workers at pulp mills in his hometown of Shawinigan learned to drive lumber trucks instead of floating logs on the river.

“I said, ‘Well, this has got nothing to do with Kyoto,” Mr. Klein said. “[Chr?tien] said ‘Well they managed.’ So you can sort of get, from that, the kind of conversation I have.”

I am not sure why the feds think so many Canadians support Kyoto – and if they do, surely they cannot know the numbers.  That’s our job to help educate them.

Plain folk talk on Kyoto, in today’s Globe:

“Climate change is a global challenge, except that most countries aren’t participating in the Kyoto Protocol.”

“They why did we sign on?”

“Because we got bamboozled into thinking the Americans would. We accepted a target only because it was close to the now-abandoned U.S. one.”

“You mean people over in the U.S. Gulf Islands don’t have to do anything we’re being asked to do?”

“Nope.”

“Well, maybe we’ll scrap that idea about buying land in Saskatchewan and move over there, instead.”

This is the bottom line.  With NAFTA soon to be expanded to labor, people will leave this country in droves.

Why is this government trying to cut off our nose to spite our face?

Why can’t this government realise we need to work with the US on this issue, and not with the rest of the world (at this point, anyway).

The Toronto Sun reports that our wishy-washy Premier is on the against side of the Kyoto fence, at least a little bit.  That’s a good thing, considering Ontario will voluntarily give up almost as many jobs as Alberta if Kyoto goes through.

Ontario will come up with its own plan to combat greenhouse gases, Ontario Premier Ernie Eves said yesterday.

The vow came following a Toronto meeting with Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, who said the odds of killing Canada’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol are “slim to none.”

“I think every province should come up with their own solution to their own problems,” said Eves, who told reporters that Ontario will come up with a plan once it can “assemble all the facts” and discuss the issue with industry and other provincial interests.

The latest study by another country even indicates that again, Kyoto will cost Canada untold billions in lost GDP. 

The Australian study estimated the cost of ratification under the current circumstances would be $13-billion (U.S.) by 2015.

As usual, the environmentalists dismiss facts and tell everyone to hope for the best:

The Sierra Club of Canada dismissed the Australian study, saying it’s not credible and that it’s almost impossible to predict what will happen 13 years down the road.

Their club says that the government will save a releatively tiny amount in health care costs…except the fact that they forget that the cost of suicide, family disintegration – in other words, state sponsored economic terrorism.

Federal government estimates say the country could save as much as $200-million a year in health-care costs because of a cleaner environment.

That would have a negative effect on the economy because fewer people getting sick means less demand for health services and fewer jobs.

“Because less people are going into the hospital and dying, there’ll be less economic activity in health care,” said Mr. Bennett. “So our health-care costs will go down. If we need less nurses and doctors, would that be a bad thing?”

Rex Murphy on the CBC National show had a good piece on the government’s smoggy thinking on Kyoto (CBC Archives…search for Oct 22)

I can’t be certain but I think Kyoto is Japanese for inexplicable. Why did we sign on to Kyoto? Until the moment the Prime Minister did, it was to most people uncertain whether we were going to or not. There was certainly nothing like a national debate. There was the odd parliamentary exchange but there may not have been even a cabinet consensus. Kyoto, despite the government’s rhetoric now was not logically arrived at after a long discussion. It was global policy for Canada on the fly so we didn’t buy into it because we thought about it and debated it properly. Or did we sign on because of the science? But the science is only half science. Any one scientist or layman who says climate change is a finished discipline, that it has the reliability or experimental grounding of the real sciences is either dreaming or ignorant. A quarter century ago, the consensus of the world’s climate experts, a phrase that should always be in quotation marks told us we were heading for an ice age. They have not explained their massive turn around, nor how their certainty then is any more to be trusted than their certainty now. So we didn’t sign on to it because of the signs because in any real meaning of the term, the science isn’t ready yet. Did we sign on to it because we knew what it would mean? How we would achieve his goals? Well we still don’t know what it will mean because the choices we have to make to meet its goals either haven’t been figured out or they’re based on presumptions no one has tested. Will we get carbon credits for reducing our greenhouse gases, not because we actually reduced them, it’s a finesse, but because we enable another country to do so. Well, the Prime Minister thinks so but the Europeans don’t, nor does most of the rest of world that has signed on to Kyoto. Do we know how much it will cost? Of course not. If we don’t know how we’re going to implement the protocols, if we don’t have a plan, we can’t have a cost for the plan we don’t have. Did we sign on to it because we knew the provinces would be on board. The provinces are not only not on board, but considering the cloudiness of what Kyoto means, they couldn’t get on board if they wanted to. They can’t find the ship, for god’s sake. So we didn’t sign on to Kyoto because we knew what we were going to do after we signed on. Did we sign on because we knew that if Canada met its Kyoto targets, there would really be a significant reduction in greenhouse gases. In other words, that it would make a real difference. No. Even if, and this if is as big as an iceberg and just as shifty, we achieved our goals, Canada’s help in saving the world from a steamy future and beach front properties off Labrador would be, by the best estimates of that dubious science I talked about miniscule. The countries exempted from Kyoto would knock an equivalent amount back into the atmosphere in a flash. In other words, after all our good efforts, mother nature will be left indifferent or unimpressed. The science, politics, means and value of Kyoto are a basket of uncertainties or insignificance. We signed on mainly because of environmental boy scoutery. It’s Canada putting out its blue box for the rest of the world, a decision taken for its symbolism, not its substance. We’re in free Willy territory here. Our Kyoto policies and the decision to implement Kyoto are more the smog than the one that presumably they want to cure. For The National, I’m Rex Murphy.

Every now and then the CBC actually has views that make sense…same for Rex.  Good stuff.

Why Canada is so eager to be European (and distance itself from its natural brother, the US), and in the process emasculate itself, is beyond me.  It also scares me.  Although I am sure that Kyoto will never and can never go through, as long as we are the major trading partner with the US, the insane talk about cutting our energy and driving our economy into the ground makes it difficult to plan for the future.

Canada’s economic growth depends on population, and therefore energy, growth.

Even if Canada reaches Kyoto targets by 2012, our growing population means energy use would have to decrease each year after that to maintain those levels

This article spells it out. 

This death wish plan the PMO has Canada should be the most worrisome issue of the day, for all Canadians.

The debate should not be merely over how many jobs will be lost between now and 2010. It should not be just about how much our economy will be slowed getting to the Kyoto target. We have to consider what will happen to Canada after we reach the Kyoto targets. There seem to be just a few approaches: Subject Canadians to relatively disproportionate quality of life sacrifices, restrict immigration and curtail economic growth, or modify Kyoto to allow for population shifts between countries. Our children will be drastically impacted by either of the first two possibilities. The government owes us an answer.