Stern: Canada's Kyoto Cost - $20,000,000,000

That's TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS, according to the favorite of Kyoto proponents, Sir Nicholas Stern, of the much touted Stern Report. (Did I mention that's the LOW BALL ESTIMATE?)

From the Toronto Star:

[NDP MP] Paul Dewar quoted Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, whose study in October estimated it would take two per cent of gross domestic product in advanced countries to reduce emissions to an acceptable level. Dewar said he believes Canadians would accept such a cost.

According to the CIA World Factbook, our GDP is just over one trillion dollars... so two percent of that would be 20 billion dollars... minimum.

And just where, exactly, are we supposed to come up with at least TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS over the next four years to keep our 2012 Kyoto commitments?

Here's a major problem that no one seems to be considering... implementing most of the steps required to "stick to the timelines" will throw tens of thousands of people out of work, and will grind the economy to a halt. Most Kyoto proponents state that costs of programs to meet our commitments will be spread over several years, between now and 2012. Well, once our economy has ground to a halt, where on earth will the Government get the necessary revenues to implement the needed programs in the subsequent years? Since fewer people will be working, and more compaines will be taking advantage of tax credits for making reductions, our taxation base will run dry REALLY quickly... unless massive tax increases are made.

Am I missing something here? In order to have the "Green Economy" revenues Mr. Dion is talking about, a massive expendeture of capital will be required up front... and any such expendeture will kill us economically. There is simply no way around the numbers, unless you start talking of running massive deficits. Is that the direction you're planning to take us Mr. Dion?

Some will say that these numbers that Mr. Baird are presenting are off, since they assume a 25% limit to Canada's use of emission credits. To those who say that, I ask, are you actually in favour of spending our hard earned tax dollars overseas so that we can buy the right to keep on spewing out more emissions than we should?

That actually touches on the other MAJOR problem with buying credits that I've heard NO ONE talk about so far... when you buy credits, they cover your excess emissions FOR ONE YEAR. What do you do the following year? Suppose we buy $10 billion in credits the first year, either in straight credits or by investing in projects in other countries... WHAT DO WE HAVE TO SHOW FOR IT THE FOLLOWING YEAR? We're still spewing out tonnes of emissions, well over our targets, and spent billions of dollars helping other contries... with little or no reductions here!

Instead, we could spend all of our money here at home and actually reduce our overall emissions. Investing here at home is the only option that makes any sense for Canada... why can't Kyoto proponents see that? As I've said all along, if we're going to do this, let's do it right and actually REDUCE our emission here at home. Any other solution is absolute foolishness.