So many fallacies, I'm not sure where to begin.
Perhaps in order? It would be the logical thing to do.
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.
You're confusing "fallacy" with "joke". Yes it's a joke that Canada is cold, but not a fallacy. The number of HVAC degree days here is a scientific fact.
Now if people are telling you we'll meet Kyoto emissions once the temperature rises and the number of HVAC days goes down, that would be a fallacy.
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.
So what? We've got tons of renewables and alternatives already, people can't afford to heat with electric. Not even in Quebec.
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.
Being done. Wind and solar, more nuclear and less coal. This isn't doing anything to lower the cost of electric to the point where it's feasible to heat with it and it does very little to reduced the use of fossil fuels in industries like mining, pulp and paper and transportation.
Making cuts in emissions does not mean you have to turn your heating off.
It pretty much does here in Canada. With the added benefit of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning and get in your car to go to work.
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.
We may need to go over that again. Including the countries I mentioned and China what are they committed to in the first phase of Kyoto and the second? Then let's compare the anticipated growth in the energy sectors in each compared to Canada and see where we'll be in 25 years. It's my understanding that in 25 years Canada's emissions will be a decimal fraction of those 5 countries.
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.
Yah, because China needs the energy to grow, as do all countries including Canada.
If we wait for China then we sink the whole goddamn enterprise, you, me China, everyone.
No what's being realized is nothing matters if China and India don't follow in step.
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.
I don't recall anyone saying that, what we said was they haven't committed to anything. Without their commitment the rest of the world is just making costly token gestures.
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.
Not really no. China is just in a better position because they're just beginning to invest in infrastructure.
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.
Unfortunately in a globalized economy you have to change everyone's economy or it becomes an unfair advantage or disadvantage as the case may be.
The costs for these "economic transformations" are not born out fairly under Kyoto.
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.
That would be my guess.
