"Angry White Men" on Kyoto

Finally, someone in the MSM is talking some sence regarding Kyoto...

"All the parties in the House except the Conservatives hold fast to the Kyoto targets of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels by the 2008-2012 target period, even though these binding targets are clearly unattainable. It's an inconvenient truth that Canada on the Liberal watch from 1993-2006 saw its emissions rise to 127 per cent of 1990 levels, a 33-per-cent miss. This period includes Dion's 18 months as environment minister from July 2004 to February 2006.

It's also a fact the United States, with 25 per cent of the world's emissions, refused to ratify Kyoto, and that its record is only half as bad as Canada's. And that China and India, with another 25 per cent of global emissions, while signatories to Kyoto, have no obligations in the relevant period. So, three countries with half the world's emissions aren't at the table, putting the burden entirely on countries like Canada, which can't meet their targets anyway.

Sounds like a great deal. Who agreed to it? Jean Chrétien, buying himself a Kyoto legacy when his government had no plan, and bureaucrats had to make one up as they went along. It is one the great public-policy failures of the last decade.

Harper's position is "No more Kyoto Kool Aid." He's not drinking it, and more to the point, he's not selling it. While Harper once said the science of climate change was inconclusive, leading to Dion's charge he was a climate-change denier (as in Holocaust denier, get it?), he now acknowledges it is the most urgent global issue of our time.

Harper has been selling another package, first to the G8, then to the Asia Pacific summit, and last weekend to the Commonwealth conference. His targets are a 20-per-cent reduction below current levels by 2020, and at least 50 per cent by 2050. Oh, and no binding targets on some without binding targets on all.

What he proposes to do about it isn't bad, it's just not Kyoto"

h/t to Joanne