Canada Considering Backing Out of Kyoto

(Time for something a little different than Bible apologetics. This post is about Environmentalism, Canada, and Politics.)

Canada May Miss $6.7 Billion Carbon Offset Bill

(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-02/canada-may-escape-6-7-billion-bill-by-exiting-kyoto-protocol.html)

The Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change was signed in 1998 and was a big political push to seriously limit the amount of fossil fuels the developed nations in the world would produce and burn. Canada was one of the first to sign the treaty (under the Federal Liberals), whereas the United States never signed it.

Canada is looking at having to pay the United Nations (or the international committee that manages the systems within the Kyoto Protocol) $6.7 billion next year for failing to meet the limits expected. Canada's output of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) has supposedly increased by one third since the 1990s, which according to the treaty, is bad. The whole thing is based on the belief the CO2 is harmful to the environment, a belief that is facing very serious questions over the past decade as more and more science is emerging that has strongly suggested that the "science of man-caused climate change" is a partial or total myth.

The way the systems within the "carbon cap" protocol work is that any country that increases its carbon output from when the treaty was signed has to pay money (as a penalty) into an international fund. That fund is then used to pay for things in third world countries, as a kind of "good will tax". The idea is that you're harming the planet and mankind by producing Carbon Dioxide, so you have to make up for it by paying a sort of "compensation". It would be like a judge ordering that a crooked banker must give millions of dollars to charity to make up for the millions of dollars he swindled out of his customers.

What's interesting to note in all this, is that "developing countries" such as China and India, by far the world's biggest produces of Carbon Dioxide (besides the United States) are exempt from these rules because they are considered "developing", in the process of modernizing. That means that those countries are not bound by international law to reduce or maintain a minimum standard of CO2 emissions. They don't have to pay penalties for what they pump into the atmosphere, despite putting far more into the atmosphere than Canada and most other European countries that are already "developed" (modern). The idea is that one day, eventually, when those countries have reached a certain threshold for standards of living and modernization, they too will have to seriously cut back on emissions. Whether or not they will is still a giant question mark that only time will tell.

Also of note is the fact that 60% of Canada's power is supplied by Hydro Power, which is a very "green" (environmentally friendly) source of energy compared to carbon fuels, yet we STILL can't meet the limits of what environmentalists and government officials decided (back in the 1990s) was a reasonable and much needed limit. Why is this? Despite tons of systems having been created and improved to prevent pollution, encourage recycling, encourage "green technology", and despite having a little more than half our energy needs supplied by Hydro Power (a "green" source of energy), Canada still can't manage to produce less or equal amounts of Carbon Dioxide compared to the 1990s (when Canada's population was 6 million less). That should be no surprise to any realists who know something about economies, technology, society today, and the nature of Carbon Dioxide itself (you realize that every human being on the planet breaths out CO2 every time they exhale, and that plants "breath" CO2, requiring it to grow).

The problem is really the mindset of the people involved in heavily promoting all things "green". They are the super-environmentalist types who believe that mankind is essentially a parasite on planet earth, that mankind's population must be reduced to reduce our impact on the environment, that all fossil fuel burning, production and use is bad, that the answer to everyone's energy needs can be found in Hydro, Wind and Solar power (which can't come anywhere close), and would generally like us all to return to the "good old days" of tribalism when mankind lived in harmony with nature (so long as you ignore the hunting of animals to extinction, human sacrifices, and all that fun stuff). The problem comes down to the environmentalist world-view of an ideal "green" perfect harmony between the natural world and mankind.

The mindset envisions us having almost no impact on our world, on the environment, and they crave this because they believe that we are destroying our planet. But they largely ignore the fact that most of the wonders of modern technology, medicine, science, education, economy and pretty much everything else in modern society and our day-to-day lives has come as a direct result of carbon fuels and the push to progress through use of the natural resources in our world. If these people had existed back a couple hundred years ago, we would have never even HAD an industrial revolution or enjoy most (or any) of the modern marvels we benefit from today. In that case, we'd all still by dying by age 40, 1 in 3 babies would not survive birth (1 in 6 mothers would not), and we'd all generally be spending most of our time working our hands to the bone just to survive (feed and clothe ourselves and our families).

CO2 is NOT pollution! It's plant food! Energy is NOT evil. It's a necessity of life! Modern technology is NOT evil. It's what enables us to live as well as we do. The super-environmentalists ideal world is pretty much a world without humans. Heavily catering to that worldview means the end of modern society and progress as we know it, or better yet (in their minds, apparently), the end of modern mankind.