Comments on: Canadian kyoto progress

By: Jaye Ellis

Jaye Ellis — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 17:19:51 +0000

It seems that the Canadian government is committed to avoiding imposing economic costs on business in order to achieve its Kyoto goals; therefore, it’s hesitating not only with respect to taxes but also with respect to binding regulations that would impose emissions reductions obligations in one form or another. I certainly think there is room for voluntary or negotiated approaches, but it seems strange to me that Canadian governments would be unwilling to impose binding targets. On one level, it might be that we have to pay some economic costs to achieve Kyoto targets, but on another level isn’t it a bit simplistic to say that protecting the environment is more expensive than not protecting it?

By: jennifer

jennifer — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 01:23:27 +0000

A new development Canada considers reducing Kyoto targets

By: Garry Peterson

Garry Peterson — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 14:34:41 +0000

One of the most valuable things about the approval of Kyoto is that it sends a signal that in the future CO2 emissions will have to be reduced. This signal encourages companies and individuals to think about how they can act to cope with future higher costs of CO2 emission. However, its interesting to think what should follow Kyoto. One proposal is the idea of Contraction and Convergence.

By: Liam

Liam — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 06:25:08 +0000

I can’t imagine most companies will be jumping at the chance to reduce their emissions, particularly if there’s no stick to whack them with if they don’t comply. It seems really naive to expect them to reduce their emissions if there is no penalty for not doing so, nor any sort of benefit for their compliance. Maybe offering a carrot in the form of tax breaks or something for companies that do make some progress, and some harsh fines to punish the laggers.

Any mention of Kyoto always kind of depresses me, it seems like most of the environmental scientists agree that the scale of Kyoto likely won’t have much of an effect, if we can even get countries to hold to the watered down treaty.

Of course such pessimism is always countered with the “it’s a good first step” argument, it just seems to be if each step takes 20-30 years to implement, we might be in big trouble by the time we’re finally ready to take a step that might do something.