Canada ping!
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Posted on 05/28/2006 4:37:37 PM PDT by Daralundy
OTTAWA (CP) - The Liberals' $12-billion plan to implement the Kyoto Protocol over seven years would have been largely ineffective, says an as-yet unpublished report by the C.D. Howe Institute.
The report, marked "do not cite or circulate," was written before the current government axed Project Green, as the plan was dubbed, and may have been a factor in the Conservatives' decision to scrap it.
Project Green largely relied on voluntary measures and incentives which have been shown not to work, says the study, which sarcastically calls the package "Project Dream."
"This policy approach will fail dramatically to meet national objectives and yet will entail a substantial cost," says the report, whose lead author is Mark Jaccard of Simon Fraser University.
The study was written in April and obtained by The Canadian Press on the weekend. It is finally expected to be made public this week.
The report says Project Green would have cost $12 billion by 2012, with much of that money being spent outside Canada.
It would have reduced emissions by 175 megatonnes compared with a business-as-usual scenario, far short of the 230 to 300 Mt. reduction required to meet Canada's Kyoto target.
Efforts like the One Tonne Challenge advertising campaign, which urged individuals to reduce their own greenhouse emissions through lifestyle changes, have "negligible effect," says the study.
"The policy approach of Canada since 1990 and continued with Project Green is clearly ineffective in causing the disconnection of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions from the economic output that must take place if these emissions are to be reduced and their atmospheric concentrations stabilized at low risk levels."
Canada's domestic emissions remain on a path that would miss its Kyoto target by at least 270 Mt. in 2010, equivalent to almost a 30 per cent emissions gap, the study says.
"Indeed, the policy approach epitomized by Project Green allows emissions to continue to grow at close to their BAU (business-as-usual) rate."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper could use the report to buttress his claims about the ineffectiveness of the Liberal plan, but he probably won't like the alternatives it recommends.
The most effective policy would likely be a gradually rising tax on greenhouse gas emissions, combined with reductions in other taxes to ensure no net tax increase, says the report.
The main Conservative response to climate change so far has been to make transit passes tax deductible, which experts say will have little effect on emissions.
Louise Comeau of the Vancouver-based Sage Climate Project said many of the criticisms in the report are valid but Project Green was not a total wash.
She said a 175 Mt. cut in emissions would have been a start, adding that the plan had always been presented as a work in progress.
Comeau said the real importance of the report is its call for tough regulations and tax changes to prevent greenhouse emissions.
kyoto ping!
Canada ping!
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When will people wake up that Kyoto won't make a scrap of difference to greenhouse emissions? However, the Asia-Pacific Partnership with its emphasis on new technologies will.
All it's ever been is a massive money/power scheme to redistribute wealth from 'industrial' countries to third world countries - while much of the money would never make it anywhere but pockets in between. (It would make the oil-for-food scheme look like childs play)
It's mantra to reduce pollution world wide is so blatantly transparent - how do you control pollution when "developing" countries, all third world plus countries like India and China and Mexico - would NOT be subject to Kyoto.
So, (tongue in cheek) where in Kyoto does is provide for these countries to corrale their polluted air, keeping it from leaving the air above their borders?
In addition, Big companies would, if constricted by the extra limitations, costs and exorbitant fines, simply skip off to a 'developing' country to set up shop where they would not even have to comply with present rules in Kyoto countries.
ergo = even more pollution in the worlds atmosphere.
(my tagline applies here)
Exactly!
Went the way of the sponsorship program, eh?
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