Canada dumps Kyoto targets
The proposed legislation would allow greenhouse gases to rise for the next 20 years and would set no firm targets until 2050.
When Canada’s new prime minister, Stephen Harper, came to power February 6, pundits predicted that he would abandon the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty on greenhouse-gas reductions. Although Harper hasn’t withdrawn Canada from the treaty, his Conservative Party government’s proposed clean air law won’t meet the first Kyoto target period of 2008–2012. In fact, it won’t meet any targets until Harper himself is an old man, in 2050.
Under the clean air bill, unveiled on October 19, final regulations would become effective in 2010, after consultation with industry. The first targets will be “intensity-based” limits on pounds of CO2 per “widget” produced. Greenhouse-gas emissions would be allowed to rise until 2020–2025, when reductions would begin. But a fixed cap of 45–65% below 2003 levels of CO2 won’t be set until 2050.
The new bill is unlikely to ever become law, because all of the opposition parties, who together form a majority in Parliament, have vowed to vote against it, says Dan McDermott, director of the Ontario chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada. With a federal election predicted to be called this spring, the new bill may be more about appearances than real policy, opposition parties say.
