Canada and climate change

Kyoto and out

Full speed ahead on carbon emissions

See article

Readers' comments




As a Canadian household owner, my energy consumption of electricity and natural gas has dropped at least 25% since 1990 through the use of new appliances, and a better insulated and sealed house. My automobiles are kept in excellent condition and also produce much less carbon. I have also benefited from the upgrades to many industrial processes that produce less emissions.
I am somewhat insulted at the implication that we as Canadians do not do our part. We have since 1990 become a significant, reliable, and responsible supplier of oil and I assume this is a big part of the problem. As far as I am concerned we should be thanked, not punished. If you do not like the consequences of oil consumption, stop consuming oil. For that matter, if you so not like the consequences of illegal drugs, stop consuming drugs.


This article is a natural place for a flame war, and it seems to be starting up.
A few things people seem to forget:
1) The oil sands account for about 6.5% of Canada's CO2 emissions, which are about 25% over target. Even had the oil sands not existed at all, Canada would still be way over target and be liable for billions of dollars of penalties. Transportation accounts for 26% of Canada's emissions, which means that cars in Ontario account emit almost twice as much CO2 as the oilsands.
2) Those penalties are supposed to ultimately end up in the hands of countries that exceeded (or should that be didn't exceed?) their targets. This for the most part means Eastern European countries, whose industrial economies had the environmentally fortuitous good sense to fall apart after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 90s. I'm afraid I agree with villainous Stephen Harper on this one: Canada shouldn't be paying notably corrupt countries like Russia and Romania billions of dollars for being good environmental citizens when the only environmental positive thing they've done in the last 20 years is fail economically.

Don't get me wrong, I think Canada should do more to limit its CO2 per capita emissions. But there are obvious ways to do this without crippling the economy, like much of Western Europe has done: converting coal power plants to gas, strengthening vehicle emission standards and so on. A carbon tax is absolutely a good way to encourage this, but I think transferring money between countries based on a formula drawn up by some apparently fairly short sighted bureaucrats decades ago is a total non-starter. The fact that China has the gaul to criticize Canada for pulling out of Kyoto is especially annoying; how can a country that was not subject to any limits and has more than tripled its own CO2 emissions since 1990 object to Canada seeking to avoid billions of dollars of penalties for exceeding its own target by 20%?

One final point, many people are criticizing Harper and the Conservatives for this move, and that's understandable. But the Liberals signed Kyoto in the first place, and they were in power for most of the time since. When the Liberals left power last (in 2006) Canada was already way over its target. So while the Conservatives have killed a treaty they quite openly detested, the Liberals were the ones that signed on to an ambitious treaty target and then did nowhere near enough to reach that target.


I don't think Canadians will be worried about not finding customers for their oil.

Only a UK based publication beholden to their middle eastern overlords would suggest something so rediculous. Would Saudi Arabia and Iran and Syria (the list goes on) really a more trusted supplier for the western world? Its laughable.

Not to mention the largest customer of oil sands oil is the USA, who is already a non-signatory of Kyoto.

Stick to economics "Economist". Global politics are not your strong suit.


Kyoto's a silly distraction. Innovation is key to solving the problem, not empty promises by politicians sitting on their bottoms in some Japanese lounge.

David P Montgomery

I think we will get over the UN's dismay and China's criticism pretty quickly. Petro-China hasn't been buying its way into the Canadian energy market so that they can shut down the tarsand's.

As for the Kyoto protocol - the former liberal Government signed it then kicked down the road for a successor government to deal with. It's been dealt. Good riddance to a bad deal.

Mad Hatter

This has to be put in perspective.

Steven Harper is George Bush, with a bible in his back pocket, some of the evil and cunning of Dick Cheney, and the simplistic understanding of trickle down economics as espoused by Ronald Reagan – who started the slide of American into a financial abyss.

A solid Neo-con, lock-em-up, whatever is good for big business is good for Canada, embarrassment to the image of Canada.

And the worst haircut and wardrobe for any political leader.

You just can’t argue sense with believers – and he is one.

Oh dear.

What next? Thought police?

Joe Marlowe

If you think of global warming as lung cancer for the planet, putting the oil-industry owned Conservatives in power in Ottawa was like putting the tobacco industry in control of curing lung cancer and emphysema.

Why is anybody surprised?

How could anybody have been stupid enough to vote for these people?

Albertican in reply to Gordon L

I agree. Canada has emitted more than its target not because of the oil sands, but because its economy has been healthy and growing for most of the last 15 years, including its population which is up 22% over 1990, meaning that carbon per capita is actually down. Viewed in that context I wouldn't consider it "out of control", keeping in mind that Australia's emissions are up something like 50% since 1990 while the population has only grown by a little more than Canada's, 26%. I don't know what kind of penalties Australia will face under the treaty (its baseline is higher than Canada's for reasons I don't quite agree with) but I wouldn't be surprised if they also duck out or simply refuse to hand over any money.

Citizen222 in reply to Sense Seeker

So to be "civilized" Canada should follow's Europe's lead and charge head first with an ill-conceived climate treaty that doesn't include all the largest greenhouse gas emitters?

Europe is effectively bankrupt and now largely irrelevant on the world stage. Hardly in a position to be making judgements on the "civility" of the much more prosperous Canadians.

Albertican in reply to Ken Berry Media

How were Germany, the UK and Poland able to meet target when Canada wasn't?
First, as I mentioned before, Poland and East Germany benefited from the closure of horribly polluting Eastern Block factories after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Second, Germany's population has grown 3% from 1990, the population of Poland is actually slightly lower than it was in 1990, and the population of the UK has increased by 8%. This compares to Canada's increase of 22%.
In addition to this, to their credit, all three of these European countries have made a concerted effort to get off of coal, which for the most part has been replaced with cleaner burning natural gas. That said, the UK gets about 40% of its energy from coal, compared to 20% for Canada, but the shift away from coal is much more pronounced in the UK. Consumption of oil has been constrained by high petroleum taxes and the relatively compact nature of the European countries, again to their credit from an environmental perspective. In my opinion, the number to watch here is CO2 emissions per capita. There, Canada performs poorly compared to Europe (16.4 tonnes per capita vs between 8.3 and 9.6) and is much closer to the US and Australia (which have slightly higher per capita rates, which makes it somewhat ironic in my opinion that American environmentalists are slamming Canadian environmental policies). It has plenty of excuses of course - it's colder, bigger and has an economy that relies heavily on primary industry - but in short I agree Canada could have done more, but the proper way to do that would have been to start 10 or 15 years ago, not kick the problem down the road until it became infeasible, and for that Peter Kent and Stephen Harper can't be blamed.


The silly thing is that the tar-sands industry only contributes to GHG emissions because of they way we extract the oil - using natural gas to melt it out of the sand. If we were to build a nuclear plant that would produce either steam or electicity, we could extract tar-sands oil with neglibigle GHG emissions.

Unfortunately, Bruce Power, who was proposing such a project, decided to cancel it 2 days ago - right after the announcement that Canada was pulling out of Kyoto. Presumably, the announcement that Canada was pulling out of Kyoto led Bruce Power to conclude that there would never be a "price on carbon" in Canada, and hence that tar-sands extraction companies would not have any incentive to switch from natural gas to nuclear. Sad.


According to «Graphic Detail» Canada's CO2 ontribution is marginal if not a drop in the bucket. Even if our country abided by all imaginable treaties it would not count for much in the face of China's firing up a new coal power plant every week; I doubt that country has its environment at heart.

The real problem for Albertans when the tar sand party is over is who's going to clean this up and, in the end, who's going to foot the bill.

Sense Seeker

Not good sports, pulling out of an international agreement when you are about to be confronted with the fact that you didn't live up to your obligations.

I always thought of Canada as a civilized country.


Canada has shown world leadership by removing itself from the fraudulent kyoto protocol which really is nothing more than a socialist plot against the free economy of western nations, a plot based on the lies of the phony science of global warming. While the deal is bad for the whole world, it was particularly damaging for Canada's long term growth. For that, Mr. Harper will be remembered as one of the best Prime Minister in Canada's history.

sokorates in reply to Albertican

Canada is larger than entire Europe and its South (with 95% population) has much colder winters and hotter summers than most Europe. Driving long distances, heating, and air conditioning uses lots of energy. At the same time per capita emissions are not up since 1990 despite oil sands projects. You might feel well bashing Canada but it does little to address real global warming problems.



Products and events


Take our weekly news quiz to stay on top of the headlines

