Personally, I have been appalled from the get-go at Canada’s lack of action regarding Kyoto. In all honesty, I did not follow it as much as a socially conscious individual should, but I did keep an ear to the ground for any large potential developments regarding it.
Unfortunately for myself (and Mother Nature) there wasn’t a whole lot to be heard. All the information I did receive over the last few years seemed to amount to very little. We had fallen behind our emission reduction goals by 2009 and that trend continued into 2011. Needless to say I was not entirely surprised to hear that the Harper Government was planning to withdraw while it was still legally viable (Countries had the option to back out, provided they gave at least one year’s notice before the end of the first compliance period, which is the end of 2012).
Looking at the issue in respect to Realism, withdrawal did seem to make the most sense. Canada had put itself in a position where in order to be in compliance with Kyoto, it would have taken something to the tune of billions of dollars, which would be used to purchase “carbon emission permits” (AAU’s) from other countries involved. These would allow Canada to remain “in compliance” with Kyoto, without actually meeting the set goals for emission reduction. So not only would tax payers be forking over billions of dollars, but to make matters worse that money wouldn’t even be going directly to reducing carbon emissions!
So from a realist’s perspective, not only is Canada saving itself billions of dollars (that essentially wouldn’t fix anything even if it was spent) but we are also withdrawing from an incredibly ineffective treaty. The two largest culprits of carbon emission (U.S.A. and China) didn’t even sign up in the first place. In reality, Kyoto includes countries responsible for less than 20% of worldwide emissions. So why sink billions simply to save face with (a portion of) the international community? In many eyes the relative gains of withdrawal far outweigh any perceived absolute gains of remaining in compliance.
At the system level, there are several reasons for why withdrawal made sense. For one, (as I said above) the largest carbon emitters never signed Kyoto in the first place, so any international backlash would not becoming from either China or the United States, but from smaller countries or international organizations who hold little to no sway within the Harper Government. Also the fact that there are very few “real” consequences of withdrawal (so long as it was done within the time frame given) seems to have largely influenced us in deciding whether to back out or not.
DISCLAIMER:
Now I don’t feel that pulling out of Kyoto was a good idea, but I hope that I was reasonably eloquent in explaining why it seemed to make sense to the Harper Government. There are always at least 2 sides to every story, and I personally think it is incredibly naive to take either one as the absolute truth.
