Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - September 2004
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But who will guard the Kyoto Samurai?

By Tom Davey,
Editor

The Kyoto Accord has dominated environmental media coverage for years, yet the basic facts remain obscure to the vast majority of Canadians, even those who avidly support it. The Accord is a combination of complex environmental factors including climate change, economics, history and political science. Its avowed goal ‘to reduce global warming’ is certainly admirable, even vital, and Kyoto’s reach could span most nations.

Unfortunately, Kyoto is like a proposed global orchestra with some of the main players missing. Indeed, it does not even have a conductor. Many significant emissions’ contributors are absent while others obdurately remain in the wings while the drama unfolds. In an environmental orchestration of industrial emissions, the big drums of China, the United States, India, and perhaps Russia, are silent while Canada’s emissions - insignificant on the global scale - will enfeeble us and weaken our voice in getting other players to join in. If politicians can enjoy this Kyoto “open air” concert without paying, why should they sign the accord? And while we are on the orchestral analogy, discord, not accord, might be a more appropriate word.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced that Britain will have to build a new generation of nuclear power stations to meet the challenges of climate change and that the US was encouraging them to look again at nuclear options. Ontario, too, is looking to nuclear energy to solve its chronic power shortages. I predict that many vociferous advocates of Kyoto will be angered by this trend, but as I wrote earlier, climate change has many volatile facets.

Proponents of emissions’ reduction include myself, having written about the possibility of global warming back in 1968. What bothers me is not the Kyoto protocols, but their enforcement. International cooperation has had a very poor record in human history, our species seemingly addicted to having major wars every decade.

When ancient Rome dominated our globe, much as the United States does today, if proposed legislation was being debated, any objections were dismissed with the phrase: “Oh the guards will see to that.” The poet, Juvenal, responded with a telling phrase which has retained its validity over the centuries. To Roman legislators he enquired: “But who will guard the guards?” His rejoinder is still valid today. Indeed, just who will measure Kyoto’s witch’s brew of complexities: the political, legal, scientific, geographic and economic issues? The European Union and our Free Trade Agreement did not stop serious trade disputes. And then, too, who will enforce Kyoto standards?

Canada, under former Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, signed the Protocol, despite his government being unable to manage relatively easy national issues such as a gun control registry, which so far, has been a fiasco and cost well over $1.5 billion and counting; or being able to account for over $1 billion of spending on Human Resources; or the federal Adscam Sponsorship Scheme which, unaccountably, lacked accounting protocols.

Almost no one promoting Kyoto mentions the problems in enforcing emissions’ trading - which will be like rolling the dice with Rubic’s Cubes. Emissions’ trading, I believe, was first proposed by the late Professor Dales at the University of Toronto. Emissions’ trading will be a Gordian Knot of epic proportions. A recent Toronto Star article asked: “Why are we even questioning Kyoto?” The writer, Ken Ogilvie, is Executive Director of Pollution Probe. While he eloquently recited some of the undeniable dangers inherent in global warming, a key word was absent - implementation. Just how do we implement and enforce the Kyoto Protocols? Doubtless, there are future environmental technologies emerging that will help solve some of the problems.

The evolution of printing provides a good example of technology induced change. When I was a young reporter in Australia, newspaper printing was a dark foundry-like operation where lead ingots were melted and poured into type under the orange glow of gas furnaces. Both typesetting, page composition and printing were physical, energy- intensive operations in toxic environments. Zinc plates were used for photographs and artwork. Guttenberg would have recognized this lead type printing process immediately. But, after several centuries, lead type gave way to camera-ready paper type - called cold type - which was pasted on boards along with artwork, then filmed, a process which, incidently, used another heavy metal, silver, as well as other chemicals.

But industrial evolution quickly ensured this new process had a much shorter life than lead typesetting. Today most printing, thanks to computers, is done with a fraction of the energy and toxicity of these earlier processes.

Nowadays, used computers present a formidable disposal problem but science almost certainly will find ways to recycle them, as the very nature of science is the continuation of multi-disciplinary research and experimentation. Thirty years ago there was no internet, home computers, cell phones, fax machines, CDs, DVDs, fibre optics, orthoscopic surgeries and nanotechnologies.

Will the straight-jacket of Kyoto be flexible enough to efficiently utilize the dynamic emerging technologies? Most of our present technologies were once dismissed as speculative fantasies when postulated. Will Kyoto recognize and promote new and ingenious inventions which could save energy and reduce pollution - or will they be stillborn? And once again, as Juvenal enquired when ancient Rome was introducing new laws: “But who will guard the guards?”

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