Politics, not the environment, drives Kyoto

 


Author:     Barry Cooper and David Bercuson

  The only winners in the increasingly heated debate over global 
warming are the boffins in Ottawa. A couple of weeks ago, the 
federal government distributed a colourful announcement in 
newspapers across the land proclaiming that "the Earth is 
getting warmer" and that implementing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, 
on the targeted reduction of so-called greenhouse gases, would 
fix things.

  Ten days ago, when asked about Kyoto at the now famous Team 
Canada press conference in Moscow, Premier Ralph Klein produced 
a letter indicating that all the premiers, except the 
ever-distinct Quebec, opposed Kyoto. A few days later in Munich, 
provincial opposition was hedged with qualifications: The NDP 
premiers of Saskatchewan and Manitoba apparently thought the 
"principles" of Kyoto were fine. They just wanted more 
consultations.

  Herb Dhaliwal, the federal Energy Minister, weighed in with even 
more qualifications: "Some important details have to be worked 
out before Canada ratifies the Kyoto Protocol," he said. "I 
wouldn't sign a contract in business unless I knew exactly what 
it meant." His boss apparently has less business sense. 
According to Jean Chretien, "the desire of the federal 
government is to sign it."

  Another sign the debate is intensifying emerged last week at a 
global warming conference in Ottawa. Lorne Taylor, the Alberta 
Environment Minister, estimated the costs of Kyoto to the 
Canadian economy to be somewhere between $25-billion and 
$40-billion a year. It would cost Alberta somewhere between 
$3-billion and $6-billion. Taylor told his Quebec critics that 
they should be more circumspect. "They stand with empty pockets 
and their hands empty, out toward Alberta, and at the same time 
they're criticizing Alberta." He was alluding to the great money 
laundering operation whereby the federal government transfers 
cash from productive provinces such as Alberta and dispenses it 
in places such as Quebec.

  At the same conference, Taylor's federal counterpart, David 
Anderson, announced that the Alberta numbers were absurd. 
Implementing Kyoto would cost a paltry $500-million, he said, 
and added more ominously that "the issue, technically, is that 
international relations fall within the purview of the federal 
government. And it can act unilaterally."

  There are two levels to the controversy around Kyoto. The first, 
as the numbers tossed about by Taylor and Anderson indicate, is 
centred on costs of compliance. Canadians know, with a certainty 
approaching perfection, that the federal government is 
incompetent when it comes to offering even order-of-magnitude 
guesses. The gun registration program proves this beyond the 
shadow of a doubt.

  Taylor may have offered a more prudent guess, but the fact is, 
accurate estimates of the costs of policies designed to reduce 
selected gas emissions are impossible. No one knows the impact 
on Canada's international competitiveness, when China, India, 
Brazil, and Indonesia are not committed to reduce anything. No 
one can estimate the costs or benefits of developing novel 
energy sources because, if new knowledge could be known in 
advance, it wouldn't be new.

  Underlying the uncertainties regarding costs are more 
fundamental uncertainties about the scientific evidence.

  To begin with, there are major measurement problems. 
Historically, nearly all temperature data have been collected 
from "urban heat islands" and, as New Zealand climatologist 
Vincent Gray observed, "all measurements of global temperature 
that are made far from human habitation show no sign of any 
warming."

  Second, there is no evidence on the net impact of human 
activity. Last spring the American National Academy of Science 
warned that because "there is considerable uncertainty in 
current understanding of how the climate system varies 
naturally," any estimates of either the magnitude or the 
direction of future warming must be highly tentative.

  Finally, vast uncertainty is built into computer models of 
climate change. The best models today dice the atmosphere into a 
collection of virtual cubes about 185 miles on a side. Because 
of the three-dimensional nature of the problem, doubling the 
resolution requires 16 times the computer power. To get the 
cubes down to a useful size -- around 20 miles a side -- would 
take computers about 1,000 times as powerful as are currently 
available.

  Even if they existed, there is no reliable baseline from which 
to begin: No one knows what global weather was really like in 
1900 or 1850 to say nothing of earlier dates. In short, because 
the estimates of the scale and timing of atmospheric warming are 
so uncertain, it is just not possible to assess the costs and 
benefits. The fact is, Kyoto is without principles and no one 
has a clue what it means.

  As a consequence, only the politics of Kyoto count. Swelling the 
population of envirocrats in Ottawa means that the sole 
beneficiary is the federal government. Everyone else loses.



Copyright @ 2002 National Post Online |