The Pessimist

The Canadian government is being roundly criticized over its stand on Kyoto and the current Bali round of negotiations by environmentalists, opposition parties and other Kyoto signatories. I find myself in the rather strange and uncomfortable position of being in agreement with Stephen Harper, John Baird and the Conservative government.

On December 1 2007 The Globe and Mail published an article called "Canada cited for poor greenhouse gas record" by HEATHER SCOFFIELD. (The article is, unfortunately, a pay per view. Parts of the article can be found cached. I can't seem to find the graph that accompanied the article, but here is my reproduction of it from the numbers provided in the article.

The graph shows the per capita CO2 produced, by country, in 2004 and 1990. The US is the world's worst at 20.6 tonnes, followed closely by Canada at 20.0 tonnes. The rest of the developed world takes the next 3 spots. The developing world stats look positively benign in comparison.

Am I ashamed of the Canadian record? Yes I am. Our emissions have increased by one-third since Kyoto was signed. Do I think something should be done about it? You bet I do. I am inclined to believe that we are fast approching the point of no return; where the planet will become uninhabitable or at least devolve into a Mad-Max form of existence.

But do I think crippling our current ecomony and life-style is something we should agree to? Well, if I thought it might change the bleak future, maybe I would. Nothing we do alone, however, is going to have anywhere near enough impact to make a difference. We produce 5 times as much greenhouse gas per person as the Chineese do. Problem is, there are over 40 times as many of them. And they've increased their per capita output by 80% in the same time that we've increased ours 33%. They haven't agreed to any binding changes.

Likewise the U.S is 10 times our size, and they haven't agreed to make any changes either.

The table below shows the numbers from the Globe article, combined with population numbers to come up with total emissions per country. (I couldn't find population numbers for 1990 for some of the countries, so for those cases I haven't shown the 1990 total emission. The developing country increases would look worse, since their populations are increasing much faster than ours.)

Now lets take another look at the graphic. See where the problem lies?

I agree with the Conservative government position at Bali. Canada should not agree to binding emission targets unless the US, China and India do too. We're playing a game of chicken with the planet. But unless the big guys blink, we're all doomed. And ThePessimist doesn't see why he should give up his comfort if no one else is going to.