Global Warming is dominating
political agendas around the
world with media coverage at
saturation point, in inverse
proportion to public and political
understanding of the complex factors
involved. I am not a newcomer to this
debate. I first wrote about it in 1968
when Global Warming was regarded
as a scientific abstraction, with public
interest at the same level of public
understanding as Double Jeopardy
audiences. Indeed, “jeopardy” might
be adjectivally appropriate for the
possible self-immolation that
Canada is doing to itself in the way
it deals with the Kyoto Accord.
At the time I first wrote about
the Global Warming issue, China
had a population of some 800 million
and India about 600 million.
Both were, then, undeniably Third
World countries lacking the voracious
energy appetites of North
America, where virtually every
household had automobiles, along
with a variety of appliances, all of
which used fossil fuels and electrical
energy lavishly. Both
Germany and Japan had already
industrialized at an amazing
pace, transforming economies which
had been decimated by World War II,
into highly sophisticated economies in
some two decades.
In 1968, I wondered, in print, what
would happen, when large countries
such as India and China inevitably
industrialized. Now reality has set in.
China now has about 1.2 billion people
and a visit to shopping malls everywhere
demonstrates that China is an
industrial superpower with an accompanying
rise in various global warming
emissions and serious air pollution. An
engineer, who is a frequent visitor to
China, recently described the air pollution
in its major cities as “vastly
exceeding anything we see in North
America”. Epidemiological consequences
of his observations were not
available but there is evidence of how
deadly air pollution can be, much closer
to home.
London reported 12,000 official
deaths from the Great Smog over four
decades ago. The actual death rate
would have been higher had not the
British Government, rather deviously,
shortened the mortality reporting period
by releasing some highly manipulative
data. The Great Smog demonstrated
that mortality from various air pollutants
can be just as devastating as
water-borne sicknesses but not as easy
either to itemize or localize.
The figures in my 1968 article postulated
massive increases in human
populations, all of which require
forests to be felled, ore to be mined,
fuel to be burned and massive increases
in livestock production, as well as
an exponential rise in smokestack
industries - all major contributors to
Global Warming. The predictions,
unfortunately, were realized. China has
since industrialized at a fantastic rate
while its population dwarfs that of
Canada, which, ironically has a larger
land mass than China.
India now has a population exceeding
one billion people who possess
highly sophisticated technologies and
a rapidly growing economy. The
United States, of course, is unrivaled
as the most powerful industrial complex
in the world. The United
States’ population is ten times
that of Canada but its voracious
appetite for fossil fuels is
unmatched on a per capita basis
anywhere. Like India, China and
many others, the US is disinclined
to sign Kyoto but the US
has formidable research forces
working on global warming emissions,
some of which may be
effective yet fall outside the complex
Kyoto protocols. After all,
this is a country which still has a
solar powered car parked on the
moon, and California, for example,
led the world with its stringent
air pollution legislation for automobiles.
On an encouraging note, the
really serious “hole” in the Ozone
Layer, is said to have shrunk by as
much as 50 percent following the
banning of chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs), a remarkable turnaround
from a definite threat to human
health, including skin cancers and
other diseases. But even the CFC ban
was difficult to police and a thriving
black market emerged following the
ban on the manufacture of harmful
CFCs.
Undeniably, the serious consequences
of the Ozone Hole prompted a
rapid, and effective, international
response to the introduction of new
chlorofluorocarbon substitutes.
It is often forgotten that massive
livestock operations are significant
producers of methane, as well as millions
of tonnes of manure which pose
serious threats to both surface and
underground water supplies. Have
these major, and quite complex, environmental
impacts been computed into
the Kyoto protocols? Chernobyl, for
example, is outside the Kyoto protocols
but its protective concrete sarcophagus
(poured from helicopters by
incredibly brave men hovering over a
nuclear inferno) remains a threat to the
European continent.
Junk Yard Wars?
In global terms, our C02 emissions
rank on the same feeble scale as our
military capabilities. This is not a
reflection on our military personnel
who have always served with distinction
on land, sea and in the air. Our
military equipment is quite another
story, some of which requires the same
ingenuity displayed in Junk Yard Wars,
simply to keep going.
Yet our Federal
government has committed to Kyoto
protocols despite the fact that most
Canadian provinces oppose Kyoto.
Amazingly, it appears the Federal
Government can sign Kyoto with an
Order in Council. We have signed the
first phase of what could have devastating
repercussions on the Canadian
economy with insignificant effects on
Global Warming. This is what I feel is
really absurd - a serious potential for
economic disaster with fractional
reductions in Global Warming.
Supporting Kyoto
I am not a heretic in any realistic
moves leading to a reduction of C02
emissions. In fact, I totally support the
ideals of Kyoto. It is the modus
operandi of implementation that I find
disturbing. We have gotten into a fiscal
quagmire of emissions trading and
other complexities, literally bartering
Canada’s future by venturing into the
unknown territory, retarding our industrial
development while paying off the
environmental malfeasance of other
countries.
Implementation and policing of
Kyoto is analogous to crap shooting
with a pair of Rubic’s Cubes as dice
and a panel of croupiers all speaking
different languages as they fathom the
results! Who will compute and implement
the results? Who is trained in
emissions accounting on a global
scale? Who will enforce the decisions?
Some of the economic theories emerging
from the mists, echo of retribution
rather than trading. Emissions trading
will involve a vast and complex array
of scientific variables including international
law, forestry, oceanography,
limnology, climatology, and geology,
to name but a few.
This incestuous inbreeding of such
learned but diverse disciplines is a
global voyage into the unknown without
maps or compasses. It is true that
Columbus set out without proper
maps, or even knowledge of longitude.
While his heroic voyages are justly
celebrated, it should be noted he actually
set out for India, never got there
and in three voyages, he never set foot
on North American soil.
Viking ships however, had landed in
both Greenland and Newfoundland,
being able to cross the Atlantic in open
boats and form settlements simply
because the climate was warmer in
those days - hence the name
Greenland. In short, the Planet Earth is
no stranger to Global Warming or
Cooling.
Where will our uncharted voyage to
Kyoto lead us? Who will be the arbiter
of the complex Kyoto findings? Who
can compel the Americans to comply
should they decide to stay out? No one,
that’s who!
I think it was Goya who said: "The
sleep of reason breeds monsters."
Kyoto could well turn out to be an
environmental Godzilla, also an
unlikely scenario, set in Japan.
Godzilla was big, powerful, brainless,
clumsy, damaging, potentially frightening
but ultimately and laughably
unconvincing. The Kyoto Accord, also
born in Japan, is a most noble ideal.
The Devil is in the details.
Although the ozone hole is smaller, scientists are warning that a single year’s unusual pattern does not make a long term trend.
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