Kyoto and African Genocide, perhaps interrelated, perhaps not

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070305&s=kirchick030807

Genocide in Zimbabwe. Even slower than Darfur, so it gets less airtime. That, and starving Africans are just sooo played out on CNN, Anna Nicole Smith is where it's at. Compromise: Feed her body to the Zimbabweans? Zimbabwe's story is perhaps one of the most tragic in Africa. Genocide, racism, famine, the ruining of Africa's breadbasket. Massive material wealth, but one of the lowest life expectancies in the world. The worst inflation in the world. If we can't seem to do anything in Darfur, with a feckless, emasculated U.N, an immoral China and their veto, a meager but brave AU force, and a government actively supporting a genocide that's spreading to neighbouring nations, using the exact same excuses the Genocidaire used in Rwanda, what's going to happen to Zimbabwe?

Now, to Kyoto. First of all, I'm opposed to cap and trade systems in principle. It's the commoditization of resources essential to human life (the same people who decry bottled and privatized water all seem to support Kyoto, funny enough, however, I can see their use. Cap and trade systems were used in the campaign against sulphur dioxide to give lagging companies time to eventually catch up and they worked. However, a plan based solely around cap and trade, like Kyoto, is plain ridiculous and simple waste of time to spend government time thinking about. Cap and trade policies are most effective when acting as a complementary part of a larger policy.

1) It's unenforceable, 2) it favours third-world and ex-soviet bloc countries, in terms of targets, not because they're especially green, but because they don't have polluting industries, or their polluting industries had collapsed after the fall of the Berlin wall, 3) the nations it needs to affect aren’t even signed on (everyone's darling on the left, Clinton, laughed at Kyoto and didn't even consider it), 4) a cap and trade system is in its death knells in Europe, 5) I could go on...

To meet our Kyoto emission targets would cripple the economy. There's no arguing that, it'd destroy thousands of jobs and bring on a recession the scale of which hasn't been seen in decades. Did I mention how China would replace our emissions in a matter of months, making our economic collapse a futile exercise? So we move on to trading for credits, the financial punishment for not meeting our quotas. The figures bandied about have been anywhere from 10-25 billion dollars in credits we'd have to buy, most likely from a nation like Russia, which continues to build polluting industry, but nicely has credits to sell, thanks Kyoto. So we spend 20 billion dollars over a few years, and on what? The environment hasn’t physically been helped by these actions, no money has gone towards changing our industry for the environment, and we’ve simply funneled money into Putin's pocket. Which comes back to my main thesis, of how if you support Kyoto in Canada, you're against the environment. That's 20 billion dollars sent to Russia that could be used, IN CANADA, to help the environment, I repeat, IN CANADA. Now, people will say, we should spend the billions to send a message, of how we'll be a leader on the world stage in the fight against global warming, etc. That's a rather expensive message, with no rational return. If China won't let our consular officials see a Canadian citizen being held in some godforsaken prison, what makes anybody think they'll magically jump in line after we spend billions of dollars in the name of the environment? I repeat, the war for the global environment will be fought in China, India, and Brazil, not in Canada. And especially not with Kyoto.

Which moves me on to the political side of things in Canada, concerning Kyoto. My theory is that a majority of people support Kyoto because they don't know anything about it. The more that people learn about the details of meeting our Kyoto targets, the more people are turned off to the goddamn treaty. Dion's taken the treaty on as an adopted child, all his apparent plans are to make it the major issue in his platform in a potential spring campaign. Which is why he'll get annihilated. Pablo Rodriguez's private member bill required what, giving the government 60 days to make a plan to meet the targets (read: plan, not action, a plan). By my calculations, that'll place the revealing of this plan in the middle of a spring election. In the midst of an election, with Dion ranting and raving about Kyoto, the CPC can break out a campaign showing people exactly what Kyoto entails, what the plan is. Jobs lost, taxes raised, funding for favourite programs, cut, all to pay for Kyoto. More and more companies leaving Canada, less 'fiscal imbalance' money, it goes on and on...Dion's hung himself on this, he's given the PM the chance to define Kyoto in the midst of a Kyoto election, where people don't actually know a thing about Kyoto, and then bludgeon Dion to death with the plan, in all the key swing areas. The CPC feigned defeat over the private member's bill, but you know that the PM had to be doing a little joyful dance in private. People still want some massive government solution, they want to sit back in their SUVs and let the government fix everything. When the PM shows Canadians what Kyoto will actually cost them, personally, Dion's doomed.

Every poll shows that the environment is the new biggest issue among Canadians, the new health care. But since when was an election decided on health care? It's decided on issues, not policy. The PM will make Dion's leadership an issue, and it'll be a killer for him. Dion will respond with policy on the environment, while the PM's entire environmental strategy isn't to help the environment. He tried that with the CAA and was pilloried for it. His strategy is to nullify the LPC advantage on the environment, sticking an attack dog in the Cabinet chair, coming out with old liberal policies, tossing money around, it all isn't to help the environment, it's to make it look like the CPC care, to have, at least, a defendable position. And it'll work.

But hey, I still don't even think there'll be a spring election.