And the vast majority of Canadians have "acted". You really need to be specific as to what "actions" need to be taken. These empty generalizations are beginning to fall on deaf ears.
Commit to cuts on their 2000 levels of emission output. In Australia, we've commited to a measly 5%, Europe and the UK have committed to 20%, China and India have both committed to reductions in the intensity of their resepctive emissions growth.
Canada in particular has many decades before
we need to act. Talk to China, tell us what they plan on doing and then we'll see where we're at. Until then sod off (the World, not you
)
...
Again, trying to strong arm Canada into Kyoto because we heat our homes with clean burning natural gas, while China chugs along without a care in the World isn't going to work.
So many fallacies, I'm not sure where to begin.
For starters, the heating fallacy. Canada can make the same cuts that other OECD countries commit to without sacrificing their heating or even making it more expensive.
The sort of schemes being put into place under the international framework are things like pricing carbon so as to achieve modest cuts while at the same time sending a market signal to stimulate development of greater efficiencies and investments into renewables.
Canada could make cuts by investing itself in rolling out renewable forms of energy, or drive greater efficiencies in the economy by doing things like utilising bio-waste from agriculture into forms of energy.
Making cuts in emissions does not mean you have to turn your heating off.
Second, China. While it's true China's emissions will continue to expand at alarming rates, this is factored into the carbon budget I outlined above, but to accommodate that unstoppable growth in their emissions it makes our task even more urgent.
Because, no matter how unfair you think it is that Canada should have to make cuts while China continues to grow (lets just forget for a moment that a significant portion of China's emissions come from supplying our consumer desires, we've essentially off-shored our emissions there, that's another story), the reality is that China is a juggernaut that will take decades to turn around.
If we wait for China then we sink the whole goddamn enterprise, you, me China, everyone.
A second point on China is that it is a fallacy to say they are doing nothing. While still confronted with the stark reality outlined above, China has voluntarily committed to making significant cuts in the intensity of their emissions growth and, from all appearances, are going hell for leather in implementing the strategy to achieve those cuts (much more so than the laggardly action we've seen in the developed world). When they set themselves a target they tend to achieve it. The other thing is investment in clean technology now far outstrips anything in the West, as does their installed capacity of renewable energy.
China is a juggernaut, it won't be turned around anytime soon, but it IS taking the necessary action to begin the process of turning it around. Which is more than you can say about Canada or Australia.
But it's not even Canada you have to worry about, it's India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil and Nigeria you have to worry about. They have about 60 times the population of Canada and no where near as "green" energy.
The whole point of the UNFCC, a point that has underpinned all international agreements on emissions going back to 1990, is that rich industrialised economies need to bring down their emissions and transform their economies, in the process making the required technologies cheaper, and provide the model for the developing world to follow so as not to stifle development and penalise the developing world for a problem that is not of their own making.
Tough call. It's hard to say nuclear isn't 20 years behind the curve because of the eco-lobby. The again, the theory seems to have progressed at a regular pace despite the eco-lobby so maybe the commercial roll out isn't quite 20 years behind. I think if it was practical even the lobbyists couldn't hold it back so I'm inclined to side more with you than S.O.T. on this.
Russia has never had a problem with an eco-lobby, they've known about thorium for 50 years, Occam's Razor suggest that the reason has nothing to do with any lobby and rather the tangible technological and economic barriers that render the idea commercially non-viable.
