In today's National Post, Don Martin states the following (The Fantasy that is Kyoto) :
"It's not enforceable, not economical and not even constitutional," fumes a senior official in the Environment Ministry. "But we're working on something to deal with it."
"...The cost and consequences of Kyoto's implementation will not be sugarcoated by this government. The intention is not to deliver warm and fuzzys on ways to meet our international obligations, but to pour cold water and hard realities on the folly of aggressively trying to meet the 2012 target.
And the bureaucrats know there's no way to deliver on the target without making Canadian consumers recoil in horror at the sacrifices they will have to make -- which is precisely the message the Conservatives aim to deliver before summer.
Martin goes on to demonstrate in very cold, concrete terms what dear Pablo's bill will mean for the average Canadian:
Canadian greenhouse gas emissions will have soared about 270 megatonnes above the Kyoto target by 2010, about 40% over the limit, leaving us just two years to scale back to the emission discharge of 1990 minus 6%.
"...That's a big-sounding reduction, but consider what meeting it means to the economy. Canada would have to shut down all the power generation in Canada. Twice over. Or, it would have to eliminate all gasoline-fuelled cars and trucks. Three times over. It could shut down the manufacturing sector. Six times over. Or it might choose to scrub all mining activity. Fourteen times over..."
But more bad news for Pablo and Dion - Even the Red Star is presenting what must be for them some very disturbing news. Richard Gwyn says the latest Angus Reid poll suggests that Canadians are getting tired of trying to be the world's do-gooder. This has negative implications for Kyoto, and by extension for its cheerleaders:
The subject was global warming and respondents were asked their preferences about alternative policy approaches.
By a wide margin, 66 per cent to 34 per cent, Canadians said they preferred "domestic action" to halt climate change rather than "international policy."
Uh-oh! It seems that Canadians are getting weary of concentrating on the rest of the world, and now want to focus on concrete issues at home. This does not bode well for parties that only have Kyoto in their election arsenal.
And now that the Liberals have handed Harper a gift-wrapped ultimatum to deal with Kyoto, you can be sure that he will be letting Canadians know exactly what this fantasy is going to cost us in real terms. My guess is that we will soon see a money bill coming that will be up for a vote in the Commons. The opposition will either have to vote for it and incur the wrath of Canadians, as they realize who is responsible for their misery, or else the opposition will have to vote it down and trigger an election, since any money bill is a confidence vote.
And thus, Pablo Rodriguez will be hoisted by his own petard.
But the fatal blow will be to Dion.
19 comments:
Jo you are getting really good at this!
Cheers!
Well said! The kyoto deal is a scam--plain and simple. And the Canadian people will say NO!
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Suzuki.
Politicians can ruin a country and it is scary to think that the Opposition Liberals/NDP/Bloc would vote for the Kyoto scheme when it so obviously would lead us to bankruptcy.
Dion & company can sit in their Ivory Towers and fret about massive unemployment - but thousands of Canadian families will pay a huge price if they win government and implement the scheme - that's not academic, it's reality.
PGP - Thanks!~ Blogging will be light for a while now though. I tried a home fix-it job this morning that went horribly wrong and ended up stabbing my finger. Hard to type.
And the whole thing is based on a fraud. Hads Suzuki stopped nearby I would have faced a big decission, organize a protest or just arrest him.
You suggestion sounds like how I get out of doing dishes. By doing it badly.
I think Canadians will be willing to give up a 1% reduction in the GST, don't you?
But you can just recycle all the doom and gloom that was trotted out to avoid eliminating CFCs. You could try the earlier arguments against doing anything about acid rain as well, but they are probably written on acidic paper so they might be hard to read now.
I think Canadians will be willing to give up a 1% reduction in the GST, don't you?
Remind me again on whose authority that figure came from?
Anyway, maybe it should be put to a referendum.
Yes indeed LS take 1% out of the economy and divert it to carbon credits or whatever!
Then when that's not enough you take another 1%.
Repeat until either the economy is damaged beyond repair or you succeed in achieving your precious carbon neutrality!
NOW Fast forward 20 years....
OH MY! Wait a minute those Chinese robber-barons have been building coal fired power plants, high emissions autos, and sucking up more petro-energy than the USA all this time! The Global Carbon imbalance is even larger than it was before we started this program.
Whoops! Guess we can say we screwed up...but we MEANT WELL!
I think Canadians will be willing to give up a 1% reduction in the GST, don't you?
Most Liberals, maybe. Oh, and by the way, your red herrings (CFCs & acid rain) to me simply indicate your lack of confidence in tackling the nuts and bolts of Don Martin's article, Richard Gwyn's analysis of polling data, and Joanne's post in general.
"Most Liberals, maybe"
Then why not reduce the GST to zero, if tax reduction is so great? Or do CPCer think some taxes are ok?
Why have taxes of any kind at all? This sounds like the old "if you'll have sex with me for a million dollars, but I offer only two dollars, we still know what you are". So do you support having taxes, or not? We can argue about the amounts, and how they are spent, but do you accept the idea of taxation? I would assume you do, if so your "Most Liberals, maybe" is just another cheap shot.
Nice try on the old "lack of confidence" gambit. The CFC "red herrings" are simply pointing out that claiming the economic sky will fall is nothing new. I could have cited the auto industry that was destroyed by having to put seat belts and catalytic converters in cars.
I hear stuff about how scientists talked of "global cooling" years ago, so therefore they must be wrong now. I do recall hearing a bit about that back then, but I don't recall it being presented as a big problem, rather more as a "we should study this more", part of the ongoing task of scientific inquiry.
So I was citing the dire economic predictions of the past that did not happen.
Martin's article talks about the grumbling of the government, so it looks to me like the orders have been given to "sex up" the doom and gloom.
It would be nice if Gywn had cited the actual question asked. Like every other poll I have read about, they never contacted me, so I don't know what the question was. It could be interpreted as Canadians want to do something and do not believe that simply having an international agreement in place allows us to sit back and do nothing. But I am guessing, since I did not see the actual question, only Gwyn's musings on it.
1% of the economy is a lot bigger than 1 point on the GST.
1 GST point brings in $5 billion. That is the cost of carbon credits based on $30/tonne and 220 million tonnes we're supposed to reduce.
Feel free to talk about buying Russian hot air, just like you want to talk about closing all our industries several times over.
It's funny how you ridicule climate change science as a bunch of "the sky is falling" Chicken Little stuff, but you do exactly the same thing about how much it costs to do something about it.
The $5 billion is the fine for not spending it on emission reductions here. Spend it here.
Do you really think the "it will destroy the economy" mantra is going to get much traction?
Why not reduce the GST to zero? Why have taxes at all? Great ideas, LS. Unfortunately the left doesn't have a clue about how to do them.
The Kyoto proponents trial balloon figure is 1% of the GDP not the GST!
Furthermore the argument is not about tax reduction it is about the merits of redistributing wealth as a ploy to reduce global environmental carbon production.
An off topic note: if you didn't catch the sleepover segment with the PM on the Rick Mercer show it is available at CBC.ca/mercerreport/video_player.html?harper_sleepover. Warning: remove all liquids from vicininty of keyboard before watching.
For those of you who don't know where the one percent of GDP figure for the cost of Kyoto came from, it is contained in the Stern report. Shall we be extremely generous and say some things in the report are qestionable?
Joanne,
good work.
Pgp (your second comment),
bravo.
Thanks, Biff. Yeah, PGP is right on with this one.
Lib supporter,
aside from the (one point GST) being a mathematical fallacy,
the proposition that a one point cut in taxes (which effectively means more money in taxpayers hands, to spend on our economy/stimulating growth)
is akin to shipping that money out of our economy and into the economy of another country,
shows a frightening lack of basic economics knowlege, and an equally frightening willingness to put your money in the hands of, not just Big Brother, but the big brother of another country.
It's nice to know that, as the Dwyer article alludes to,
most people are not like our lib supporter here.
okey dokey biff, but the money isn't supposed to be shipped offshore, it is supposed to be spent here.
What part of "spend it here" did you not get?
pgp - "Furthermore the argument is not about tax reduction it is about the merits of redistributing wealth as a ploy to reduce global environmental carbon production."
The discussion touches on tax reduction to put it in perspective. The costs are comparable to the cost of a tax reduction, as opposed to your fear mongering about shutting down our economy, how many times over was it again?
Your canard about "wealth redistribution" is based on the idea of not spending the money here. Traffic fines are also a wealth redistribution system, but I choose to avoid paying them by doing the right thing and not speeding.
biff - "frightening"
Your whole strategy here is about frightening everyone with the spectre of economic collapse.
Only problem is, destroying the economy is not the plan of anyone, even your people.
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