I've heard all about this as a decision but have heard nothing about the reasoning behind it.

I did read one article that said the targets were so unreachable, we'd have to remove every moving vehicle from the road and go back to horse travel within one year to meet the standards or the penalties would be 14 billion dollars per year. But that's mostly hearsay - I haven't seen anything official.

A little bit here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol#Withdrawal_of_Canada

Yeah, people are making a really big deal of dropping out of it, and I understand wanting to participate in something that will help stop climate change, but if the targets are completely impossible to meet, then there is no point in participating.

There is an article here that says that meeting the requirements could cost $3500 per Canadian, or $30 billion, as a nation, to purchase emission credits.

The only industrial nations to come close to their targets have done it through changing their power generation to cleaner methods, but 70% of Canada's power generation is already "low-emission" and changing the others is almost out of the question at this time.

We should be making an effort to reduce emissions and help the environment, but sticking with an insane plan isn't going to help us get there.>> ^Sagemind:

I've heard all about this as a decision but have heard nothing about the reasoning behind it.
I did read one article that said the targets were so unreachable, we'd have to remove every moving vehicle from the road and go back to horse travel within one year to meet the standards or the penalties would be 14 billion dollars per year. But that's mostly hearsay - I haven't seen anything official.
A little bit here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol#Withdrawal_of_Canada

The Conservative government have done everything they could to undermine Kyoto since coming to power in 2006. They, along with their Oil Patch backers, have delayed implementing key strategies until indeed now it is too late, too expensive, and completely unfeasible to reach the targets that BY LAW our country had committed to. At the same time those same political and financial interests have waged a propaganda campaign to convince Canadians that Kyoto was too expensive and unfair to our national interests in that it put too large a burden on developed nations like ours while developing nations such as India and China were not obliged to lower their own emissions.

I remember being angry that the United States, under then President George W. Bush, refused to ratify Kyoto which the previous President Clinton had agreed to do. However Canada DID ratify the treaty, making our offense much, much worse.

The recent talks at Durban, known colloquially as Kyoto II, failed for the same reasons. The Canadian Government deliberately sabotaged the talks and bullied smaller nations to do the same with threats to withdraw financial aid and impose trade and travel barriers. Our government is behaving like an Imperial power forcing other nations to do what we, and more specifically our business interests, want them to do.

We Canadians have a certain view of ourselves- we think the world sees us as peacemakers and conciliators. This may have been the case in the time of Trudeau and Pearson, but is the case no longer. Harper is quickly leading us down a much darker path where we are increasingly being seen as obstructionist, militant and bullying.

Shame on our Prime Minister, shame on the Conservative Government.

Shame on all of us.

*promote the shame.
>> ^Skeeve:

Yeah, people are making a really big deal of dropping out of it, and I understand wanting to participate in something that will help stop climate change, but if the targets are completely impossible to meet, then there is no point in participating.
There is an article here that says that meeting the requirements could cost $3500 per Canadian, or $30 billion, as a nation, to purchase emission credits.
The only industrial nations to come close to their targets have done it through changing their power generation to cleaner methods, but 70% of Canada's power generation is already "low-emission" and changing the others is almost out of the question at this time.
We should be making an effort to reduce emissions and help the environment, but sticking with an insane plan isn't going to help us get there.>> ^Sagemind:
I've heard all about this as a decision but have heard nothing about the reasoning behind it.
I did read one article that said the targets were so unreachable, we'd have to remove every moving vehicle from the road and go back to horse travel within one year to meet the standards or the penalties would be 14 billion dollars per year. But that's mostly hearsay - I haven't seen anything official.
A little bit here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol#Withdrawal_of_Canada
< br>

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, December 15th, 2011 11:53am PST - promote requested by therealblankman.