Ambrose "learning", maybe softening on Kyoto

[someone]

I could come up with a handful of guesses (more religious, richer, larger immigrant population having children, more opportunity.....) but they would just be guesses.

I think that a couple of your guesses are actually effects that go in the opposite direction. Normally, richer countries have fewer kids. Likewise, high income people have few kids as the opportunity costs of kids go up. Also, Canada has found that within a generation, immigrant birth rates are down to the national average. Of course, that is partly because the point system encourages the type of immigrant that is less likely to have kids, e.g. educated (there is a strong negative correlation between the number of kids and a woman’s education) and professional families. These are the people for whom the opportunity costs of children is the highest. It could be that the composition of American immigration is different but I can't see it being that different.

I do remember posting a thread about the birth rate for Republicans being higher than Democrats

Perhaps that is picking up the effects of religion.

 

[canadian scoundrel]

What is lost in this is how badly Rona Ambrose is handling the Portfolio

Good arguments so far, but what is being lost here is how badly Rona Ambrose is handling the portfolio of Minister of Environment. And I for one find that hard to accept. Here we have an extremely intelligent (or what i thought was) woman who has no concept of what her portfolio is. At the same time it shows what kind of weak person she is when Minister Ambrose states that it was the previous governments fault that Canada has not met the goals. Sure there may be some truth in it, but instead of trying to fix the solution with something worse you deal with the problem that is at hand - meeting Kyoto accord standards - while not airing your dirty laundry in front of the whole world. After all, Canada has signed the document meaning we have to agree to a deal. We have to follow that deal. We have to keep our word. I as a voter am extremely disappointed in this minority government. I wanted a change in Ottawa, but so far after close to a year in power, Harper is showing the country that the Liberals were right. This Spring when we are voting, i will have to swallow my pride and vote liberal again. I hate that.

 

[Big Sleazy]

What if I told you that Canada and the US and any other country for that matter could easily meet and exceed the Kyoto Accord emmissions within a year. Would you believe me ?
I was involved in a project a few years back that involved adding a fuel additive that reduced the emissions from your car by over 80%. It was about to be signed into legislation by the Clinton administration. It got put aside and died on the shelf with the Bush Administration. So when people sit around and argue about how Kyoto is going to effect our economy, I call BULLSHIT ! Harper is full of crap and so is ever single politician out there that argues they can't meet the Kyoto Accord Emmissions because it would effect there economy. You know what the downside of this fuel additive was ???? It doubled your mileage ( as well as reducing emmissions by over 80% ). So anyone that argues here or anywhere else that Kyoto is bad...is an idiot and a liar or just completely misinformed and speaking out his ass. Ambrose and Harper included !

BS

 

[johnhenrygalt]

If the magic fuel additive would increase mileage, it would already be on the market - no "legislation" required. Unfortunately, the magic additive doesn't exist.

 

[johnhenrygalt]

After all, Canada has signed the document meaning we have to agree to a deal. We have to follow that deal. We have to keep our word. I as a voter am extremely disappointed in this minority government. I wanted a change in Ottawa, but so far after close to a year in power, Harper is showing the country that the Liberals were right. This Spring when we are voting, i will have to swallow my pride and vote liberal again. I hate that.

Nonsense.

The government of the day (in this case the Cretien administration) has the consitutional power to conduct foreign policy, but has no authority whatsoever to speak on behalf of Parliament or any of the Canadian provinces; and it is a basic principle of our constitution that no Parliament can bind a future Parliament.

When Canada (or any other country) signs a treaty, it is always understood that the signature is conditional upon ratification and, where the implementation of the treaty requires specific legislation (such as Kyoto) it is conditional upon the enactment of such legislation by the constitutionally competent bodies (in Canada's case, Parliament - not the PM - and the provinces, each of which are sovereign within their areas of jurisdiction.

Just because Chretien made a boneheaded move signing Kyoto doesn't bind Parliament and Canada's provinces.

 

[slowpoke]

Well, since you're back to being reasonable.....

Yes, we need to be as efficient as possible - that means using as little energy to produce wealth as possible and make that energy as pollutant free as possible. We also need to balance this with standard of living concerns. One way to phrase this discussion is how many jobs are you willing to eliminate to get less pollutants? Should India and China (who have 25% of the worlds people) be held to first world standards....

I especially love those who preach to us about this issue (which I see as a real issue) while they take SUV convoys 500 feet (Al Gore in Caans), own multiple SUVs (John Kerry) and fly private planes (all of them).

If you're limiting your eco footprint, good for you, you just want to be careful about forcing others into your point of view (I strongly suggest you download and watch the "Smug Alert" episode from season 10 of South park.

OTB

I haven't changed my position on global warming anywhere in the course of this thread. Not one iota. So your characterization of my last post as some kind of return to reason is presumably more about the fact that I didn't bother to specifically mention the following:

A) the US is emits more greenhouse gas than any other country

B) these US emissions are a major contributor to the problem of global warming - something like 25% of the total

C) that scientists predict that this climate change will soon cause significant or even catastrophic harm to many of the other inhabitants on this planet

D) that the US' GDP numbers, efficiency, productivity etc are all really neat and impressive but that these attributes in no way give the US, or any other country, the right to do more than their per capita share of harm to our planet and its other inhabitants

Maybe this analysis is smug and unreasonable but I think not. Maybe you could actually describe what is so smug and unreasonable about it (or any of my earlier posts). Any fool can make vague clucking and hissing noises and indicate his general disagreement by muttering catchy little fragments like "wrong", "bad", "smug", "unreasonable" etc. But it takes more than saliva and hot air to organize those noises into some kind of coherent argument. Go for it!

 

[onthebottom]

I haven't changed my position on global warming anywhere in the course of this thread. Not one iota. So your characterization of my last post as some kind of return to reason is presumably more about the fact that I didn't bother to specifically mention the following:

A) the US is emits more greenhouse gas than any other country

Because the US has the largest economy in the world.

B) these US emissions are a major contributor to the problem of global warming - something like 25% of the total

Because the US has 25% of the world economy.

C) that scientists predict that this climate change will soon cause significant or even catastrophic harm to many of the other inhabitants on this planet

I guess it depends on what you mean by "soon".

D) that the US' GDP numbers, efficiency, productivity etc are all really neat and impressive but that these attributes in no way give the US, or any other country, the right to do more than their per capita share of harm to our planet and its other inhabitants

Not so much neat as simple facts - much like you live far beyond the World Per Capita and thus take up more than your fair share.....

Maybe this analysis is smug and unreasonable but I think not. Maybe you could actually describe what is so smug and unreasonable about it (or any of my earlier posts). Any fool can make vague clucking and hissing noises and indicate his general disagreement by muttering catchy little fragments like "wrong", "bad", "smug", "unreasonable" etc. But it takes more than saliva and hot air to organize those noises into some kind of coherent argument. Go for it!

I've done it, several times. In fact, you can look at the per capita green house emitions for Canada vs the US and you'll find that we're in the same neighborhood - and your economy is 25% smaller per capita.....

OTB

 

[onthebottom]

Nonsense.

The government of the day (in this case the Cretien administration) has the consitutional power to conduct foreign policy, but has no authority whatsoever to speak on behalf of Parliament or any of the Canadian provinces; and it is a basic principle of our constitution that no Parliament can bind a future Parliament.

When Canada (or any other country) signs a treaty, it is always understood that the signature is conditional upon ratification and, where the implementation of the treaty requires specific legislation (such as Kyoto) it is conditional upon the enactment of such legislation by the constitutionally competent bodies (in Canada's case, Parliament - not the PM - and the provinces, each of which are sovereign within their areas of jurisdiction.

Just because Chretien made a boneheaded move signing Kyoto doesn't bind Parliament and Canada's provinces.

Wait a minute, after multiple years of US bashing by Canuks on this board about Kyoto - are you in or out? And if you're in are you meeting your obligations and if you're out go bash yourself.

OTB

 

[someone]

I've done it, several times. In fact, you can look at the per capita green house emitions for Canada vs the US and you'll find that we're in the same neighborhood - and your economy is 25% smaller per capita.....

OTB

Also important, weather and transportation (the second largest country on the planet) use up a lot of energy.

Wait a minute, after multiple years of US bashing by Canuks on this board about Kyoto - are you in or out? And if you're in are you meeting your obligations and if you're out go bash yourself.

OTB

lol. Did you miss the first post of this thread and the others slowpoke has started in this topic?

Edit: OK rereading the first thread, I guess it does not actually say what position Ambrose was changing, only that she was changing it.

 

[Asterix]

Kyoto is unfortunately not worth the paper it is written on. I find it amazing that China was given a free pass until 2012. The degree of pollution in many areas is staggering, and with industrialization and a huge committment to coal burning plants, going to get much worse very quickly. Entire cities, even Bejing, have at times disappeared from satellite view due to the haze, some for weeks at a time. All of the supposed gains in CO2 reduction will more than be cancelled out by the path China has chosen.

 

[slowpoke]

Part of the environmental "footprint" which I have never seen taken into account is reproduction. In this respect the "West" is doing far more than its part in addressing environmental concerns by reproducing at a pace below population replacement.

If some guy can't keep it in his pants and fathers 8 kids (thereby creating 8 additional "footprints" that the rest of us are being asked to deal with), that's not my problem. It's a pity for the 8 rugrats though who will have to share a much smaller portion of the pie.

Edited to correct grammatical errors.

I haven't seen much analysis of this either. But we often hear about, for example, China's laws that place strict limits on the number of children couples are allowed to have. I heard a radio blurb recently that China even restricts the number of dogs a person can own. I also understand, rightly or wrongly, that Chinese farming methods are still rudimentary and labour intensive. So I can see how Chinese farmers would want to breed ike rabbits just to produce the necessay manpower to run a farm without modern equipment. But what I'd really like to know is whether that Chinese family of 6 or 10 or whatever contributed anywhere near as much carbon as a Canadian family of 4.4 with 1 older car, 1 SUV or minivan, 1 bungalow, an assortment of boats, SeaDoos, snowmobiles, ATV's at a cottage with a wood burning stove. Anyone?

What stands out in my mind is that we in the west would be aghast if any gov't told us we could have 1 or maybe even 2 kids and only 1 dog. If what I'm hearing about these Chinese population control measures is true, I'd say they were going well beyond anything we would have the balls to do. I only wish we would attack our greenhouse gas emissions with as much gusto as they have with overpopulation.

 

[someone]

What stands out in my mind is that we in the west would be aghast if any gov't told us we could have 1 or maybe even 2 kids and only 1 dog. If what I'm hearing about these Chinese population control measures is true, I'd say they were going well beyond anything we would have the balls to do. I only wish we would attack our greenhouse gas emissions with as much gusto as they have with overpopulation.

We would be "aghast" and we would have a say in the policy. In the case of the average Chinese citizen, they may be aghast but they don't have a say.

 

[slowpoke]

Kyoto is unfortunately not worth the paper it is written on. I find it amazing that China was given a free pass until 2012. The degree of pollution in many areas is staggering, and with industrialization and a huge committment to coal burning plants, going to get much worse very quickly. Entire cities, even Bejing, have at times disappeared from satellite view due to the haze, some for weeks at a time. All of the supposed gains in CO2 reduction will more than be cancelled out by the path China has chosen.

I also found it amazing that China would get a free pass. But I have read that China and India and Brazil etc have all been given these freebees because, apparently, they were not the cause of the global warming / carbon emissions problem to anywhere near the extent that we were. Here in the west. That's right...you and me. I didn't personally measure all these billions of tons of carbon that we have been spewing with impunity for the last 50 to 90 years but I'll take it as a given that the Kyoto crowd, with all that wrangling and negotiating over the last decade or more, have reasonably established that global warming is our mess so we can jolly well throw in a bit extra to get it sorted before we start asking China et al to bite the bullet. That is the rationale. If you have any reliable info to the contrary, then please spill it. This is the crux of the problem. Most North Americans have no sense of the cumulative total carbon we spewed all those years ago as we raced around in our 350 Chevy's and Hemi's under glass. LOL!

 

[slowpoke]

We would be "aghast" and we would have a say in the policy. In the case of the average Chinese citizen, they may be aghast but they don't have a say.

No argument about that. In a way, that is the problem. The Chinese gov't can just do whatever needs to be done. We can't do anything nearly as drastic as that because our gov't would be out on its ear at the next electoral opportunity. Overall, we're much better off with our democracy but our children could still end up canoeing to work at the nearest marina because of our chickenshit politicians and their democratic limitations. Capitalism is simply too successful on the production (pollution) side and too ineffectual on the regulation (caps & controls) side. Does any of your economic training include bioeconomics or ecoeconomics? Please say yes...

 

[Asterix]

Slowpoke,

The problem now is not so much where it has come from as where it will come from. The International Energy Agency predicted earlier this month that China will surpass the US in greenhouse emissions by 2009, nearly ten years before what was previously thought only a few years ago. Their reliance on hundreds of new coal plants they plan to have online before 2012 will have a huge impact. That, and also their indifference to any serious regulation as they try and become the new industrial giant. In terms of a radical increase in emissions, India, also making a big committment to coal, won't be that far behind.

 

[slowpoke]

Slowpoke,

The problem now is not so much where it has come from as where it will come from. The International Energy Agency predicted earlier this month that China will surpass the US in greenhouse emissions by 2009, nearly ten years before what was previously thought only a few years ago. Their reliance on hundreds of new coal plants they plan to have online before 2012 will have a huge impact. That, and also their indifference to any serious regulation as they try and become the new industrial giant. In terms of a radical increase in emissions, India, also making a big committment to coal, won't be that far behind.

I don't know how to answer that properly. On the one hand, as China and India will certainly remind us, we did for many decades exactly what they are planning to do right now. Their argument will undoubtedly go something like this:

Global warming and the degradation of the whateverosphere has been accumulating for MANY MANY years. It is probably already too late to avoid the catastrophe visited upon the world by western excess. We can skip the boring details if we all promise to google "1975 Chevrolet Biscayne" and "1975 Ford Victoria".... China and India indeed have a point.

The argument we western ecocriminals would rather emphasize, is all about "going forward" and "our ultimate survival as a species" blah blah. This argument will sound an awful lot like all those previous lectures about why Korea or Iran mustn't be allowed to have nuclear weapons. This is seriously hilarious coming from a country who has thousands of lethal nuclear warheads and who is the only country to use them on live human beings. Civilians in fact... Good luck selling that one. The US has absolutely no moral or ethical capital left. Why would any rational human being buy into any of these bozo arguments? Not a fucking chance! Sorry....

 

[Asterix]

Slowpoke,

I'm not trying to debate any moral arguments, just pointing out a pertinant reality. As the world is now developing, China in it's current path will dwarf all other countires in greenhouse emissions. There is no us or them as we will all have to share equally in the impact, but to ignore the impact China will have, and it will be massive, will bury us all.

 

[someone]

Capitalism is simply too successful on the production (pollution) side and too ineffectual on the regulation (caps & controls) side. .

Actually, I think that history shows that communist countries have done worse. Thus, I think that it is like Churchill’s comment about democracy being the worse form of government except for all others.

Does any of your economic training include bioeconomics or ecoeconomics? Please say yes...

I’m likely going to bore you with my answer but you did ask. In economics we usually study these things as externality problems. The idea of an externality is a cost (negative externality) or benefit (positive externality) that one economic agent’s actions impose on another. The idea is that you want pollution up to the level where the social marginal cost is equal to the social marginal benefit. However, the cost producers of pollution pay is less than the social cost, so they produce more pollution then is socially efficient. Thus, it is a position in between the extremes you often hear. I.e. despite what some extreme environmental groups say, zero pollution would not be efficient (indeed, could human life even survive without some pollution). Yet if externalities exist, it is not efficient to allow the market complete freedom. Of course, the question remains how you determine the costs, without which you don’t know the efficient level. As I said in other threads, I’m sceptical that people are willing to pay much to reduce greenhouse gases which would indicate that their view of the costs are less than yours and mine.

 

[allaboutben]

You guys all ignore the hard fact that the environment on this planet has been different throughout the course of history. Where do you think those rocks on the side of the road came from?

 

[johnhenrygalt]

I haven't seen much analysis of this either. But we often hear about, for example, China's laws that place strict limits on the number of children couples are allowed to have.

China is doing its part to control population. When the policy was introduced, such a high proportion of its population was below reproducing age that population continues to skyrocket, but it should stabilize within a generation.