Canada Quits Kyoto Protocol

The conservative premier of Canada announced that his country will withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol the only international agreement so far reached to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Admittedly the Kyoto agreement is adequate to reduce global warming by 2℃, a goal climate scientists say is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change, but it represents the only legal contract to actually reduced emissions since 1997 when it was signed by Canada. The Canadian environment minister justified the decision saying Canada would risk $14 billion in penalties if it remained a signatory to the Protocol. Premier Stephen Harper said the accord was "an obstacle", not a solution to global climate change since it does not cover the two largest polluters, the United States and China, and it was an error for the liberal government at the time to have signed. Under the terms of agreement Canada would had to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6% of its 1990 levels. When Harper became premier in 2006, he rejected those goals as unattainable and substituted a reduction of 17% of 2005 emissions by 2020. None of these goals are enough to avoid catastrophic climate change according to ecologists. At the Durban, South Africa conference which ended Sunday, delegates from 190 nations agreed to extend the effect of the Kyoto accord to 2017 in the absence of a new international agreement. But Harper's government claims a new agreement covering all countries that permits some economic growth is the way forward. Canada is an economy that relies heavily on exploitation of natural resources, such as the ecologically disastrous mining of the Alberta tar sands. Harper's decision to exit Kyoto was denounced by his parliamentary opposition.