[hurley_108]

ridenrain ridenrain:

It's quite simple. If you support Kyoto, you also support Canada sending taxpayers money to China and other such countries.

If that's the metric, then no, I don't support Kyoto.

[ridenrain]

hurley_108 hurley_108:

ridenrain ridenrain:

It's quite simple. If you support Kyoto, you also support Canada sending taxpayers money to China and other such countries.

If that's the metric, then no, I don't support Kyoto.

So you do not refute my take on the Kyoto accord?
You've come out in support of Kyoto yet you reject buying carbon credits?

(This is sounding like Avro all over again, who expected to sell China some magical Canadian technology that would offset this carbon debt.)

[Scape]

ridenrain ridenrain:

It's quite simple. If you support Kyoto, you also support Canada sending taxpayers money to China and other such countries.

As I understand the protocol, carbon credits are an optional mechanism in which to meet short term goals. Now Rain, do you support the very real damage that WILL be done to the Canadian economy if we do nothing now? Even if we only do a half measure now, such as Kyoto, it will have been some action on an agreement that has been ratified into law. If you walk away from Kyoto you will still end up paying anyway. Just like if we were to walk away from NAFTA or any other major agreement. If anyone is laughing it will be historians looking back at people such as yourself that were bickering over where the deck chairs should be on the Titanic.

The only reason Harper is green is because he needs the NDP to keep the house. If he had a majority there would be zero action on the environment on the federal level and that is where action is needed the most. Provinces such as BC are now pulling up the slack from the lack of leadership and direction. This will end up creating the most disorganized and inefficient approach possible if we all end up doing our own thing instead of working as one on this. That is why Kyoto is a 1st step but not the last one, where we go from here is our choice but we can not have a say or even a lead in the process if we don't forge that process now.

[Clogeroo]

Kyoto is just pledge to reduce emissions and the motivation to do so would be that if you failed other countries doing a better job could pick up your slack by trading emissions and having to invest in their countries. Also the developed nations are required to provide the technology to help undeveloped nations as well. It is also enforced for developed countries only like Canada and those in Europe while China and India I guess are not responsible because they were not around for the industrial revolution. I have my doubts that Canada ever really contributed much pollution during that period considering in 1900 we only had a few million people.

It is a stupid agreement in many ways and all everyone is doing is playing politics with it like the liberals trying to pass the buck now on the present government for not meeting our targets, which are utterly impossible. To meet our targets of reductions we would have to somehow magically cut 60% of our missions in four years. Probably even more and to pay for this increase, as ridenrain said would cost billions of dollars either here or sending it to countries like China and elsewhere. Not to mention the lost jobs especially for our manufacturing sector packing up and leaving either for the United States or China and even more money lost there.

To meet this Accord it will cripple our economy, cost thousands of jobs, tax revenue, and billions of tax funds. Considering we are still trying to reduce our deficit and are trying to fix other areas that have been neglected such as the armed forces, health care, and education the idea of this “we don’t act now it will hurt us later” slogan doesn’t apply to us if we act now our country will be ruined.

The better way will be to invest money into new technology, transit, and giving money to Canadians and working with the industry to meet our own goals. Let’s face it changing an entire industry and way of life doesn’t happen overnight and making this into some political game because Canadians are paying some-what attention to it now is not a good thing. This will take an effort spanning 25 to 50 to even a 100 years. This issue could easily be put aside within four years time and forgotten but the government of the present and future ones will have to keep at it if they really want to see results. If you're not in it for the long haul then there is no point in even trying.

[fire_i]

Well, Ridenrain, nothing says that, if we bought carbon credits, we'd have to buy them off China. We can buy it from eastern European countries and caucasian countries like Kazakhstan. Alone they don't have much credits to sell, but if put together, we could get a large chunk of the credits we'd need to buy from them. Also add in some other countries like Germany and the UK (especially the latter, since it seems to be very interested in further reducing its emissions, which will in turn increase the volume of carbon credits they can sell). Then there are and always will be enterprises, like the 100% Canadian CO2 Solution that would certainly love to be able to sell carbon credits to its own government (and that'd keep money in the country too, so it'd be perfect). Moreov-

Wait.

China.

Huuuuuuuuh, China? Carbon Credits. China. Huh. China pollutes more and more. How could they have credits to sell? They'd need to buy credits, not sell them. But they'll probably just do nothing, it suits them well anyway.

If we bought carbon credits, we'd send money to obvious allies OR states that realistically can't get in our way nor hold any kind of grudge against us, like, ever. That, and enterprises - and nothing says we can't favor canadian ones when it comes to that.

Anyway, why would the government pay money for carbon credits? Simple. We signed the dotted line. So we follow the treaty. I don't care if the Liberals screwed up. Hell, they totally screwed up. That's no excuse to refuse to act now. I don't care if it means the new party in power, namely the Cons, would have to commit political suicide by paying billions - a treaty is above party politics and, honestly, in such a case, I don't give a rat's ass what happens to party X due to party Y's actions. Anyone out here who puts the good of a party before the good of the world and, by extension, Canada, should be slapped. Hard.

So instead of putting the burden on everyone else, we should buy the damn credits.

Just like how we mustn't pull out from Afghanistan even though the coalition could still function without us, just not as well : we'd save billions, but we signed the dotted line, so we stay no matter what. And we certainly don't just leave the burden to everyone else.

(Yes, I like the Kyoto Treaty -> Afghanistan analogy a lot)