Mexico has joined the growing worldwide call for Canada to reconsider its decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol.
Environment Secretary Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada has sent a message to his Canadian counterpart, Peter Kent, urging him to change his mind, reminding him that nations must “cooperate with objectives that send a message of hope to humanity, principally to those who in these moments are suffering the impact of climate change.
“The Kyoto Protocol represents a multilateral scheme with solid rules and commitments, set out to save the planet,” Elvira said.
In a bombshell announcement last week at the climate change conference in Durban, Canada evoked its legal right to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, indicating that penalties as high as 14 billion dollars (Canadian) for its failure to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets was a significant reason for the decision. Kent said that Canada would continue to work toward an agreement that includes targets for developing nations.
The Stephen Harper administration has frequently criticized the Kyoto accord, in which some of the world’s most heavily polluting nations are signatories but are not obliged to meet emissions targets.“The Kyoto Protocol does not cover the world’s largest two emitters, the United States and China, and therefore cannot work. It’s now clear that Kyoto is not the path forward to a global solution to climate change. If anything it’s an impediment,” Kent told reporters.
Meeting the protocol’s targets would require “removing every car, truck, all-terrain vehicle, tractor, ambulance, police car and vehicle off every kind of Canadian road,” Kent said.
In 1990, Canada’s Liberal government had agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by six percent by 2012. But in 2009, emissions were 17 percent above their 1990 levels.
The new agreement reached in Durban will include developing countries, but didn’t go far enough in many delegations’ opinions, since it won’t be negotiated until 2015, and won’t take effect until after 2020.
The announcement of the Kyoto withdrawal seems to have split public opinion in Canada, with oil companies and conservative commentators calling the move sensible but leaving pro-environment activists furious.
“Kyoto is now mostly about punishing rich countries for being rich and forcing them to pay vast sums – up to 1.6 trillion dollars a year – to the U.N. for redistribution to poorer nations,” wrote Lorne Gunter in the National Post.
The Conservatives “imposed a death sentence on many of the world’s most vulnerable populations by pulling out of Kyoto,” said Greenpeace activist Mike Hudema.
Former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien warned Canadians that walking away from Kyoto and ending the long-gun registry may just be the start of a series of controversial moves made in the wake of Harper’s recent election triumph. Abortion and gay rights are likely to be the next issues put on the table, he said.