Canada praised for climate leadership @ APEC

[Tonington]

The big news coming out of the APEC summit is not the George Bush mistakes at the podium, it is the non-binding agreement which Canada helped broker in.

The nations attending agreed to non-binding targets to reduce energy intensity by 25% by 2030. Canada is being attributed with the leadership on this issue, and can only be thought of as leading the world in a business as usual approach.

First of all, the idea that energy intensity serves as a useful measure of climate action is preposterous. I won't get into the definition, as I'm sure anyone who reads this is well aware of what intensity is, a scam.

To give some context to this ludicrous situation, lets take a look at the US as a case study. A report released by the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration shows just how ludicrous this is. Heres an exerpt:

. Energy intensity, measured as energy use per dollar of gross domestic product (GDP), has declined since 1970, most notably when energy prices have increased rapidly (Figure 7). Between 1970 and 1986, energy intensity declined at an average rate of 2.3 percent per year as the economy shifted to less energy-intensive industries and more efficient technologies. Without significant price increases and with the growth of more energy-intensive industries, intensity declines moderated to an average of 1.3 percent per year between 1986 and 1999. Through 2020, energy intensity is projected to decline at an average rate of 1.6 percent per year as efficiency gains and structural shifts in the economy offset growth in demand for energy services. Energy use per person generally declined from 1970 through the mid-1980s, and then tended to increase as energy prices declined. Per capita energy use is expected to increase slightly through 2020, as efficiency gains only partly offset higher demand for energy services.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/presentations/oiaf/speeches/0321eia.html
We all know that past governments here in the West have by and large paid lip service to the climate change problem, even now this still appears to be the dominant trend. So while there has been very little action coming from governments, the market naturally manages to decrease Intensity all on it's own.

Basically, without any policy changes, the US could grow it's GDP by 3% a year, for the next 23 years and meet this target, while emissions rise by 75%.

Canada has followed a similar trend, though our decreases have been more moderate than the US, who decreased energy intensity by 4% in 2006.

So as we can conclude, this is nothing more than business as usual, even CBC, the leftist pinko rag that they are missed that...

 

[CDNBear]

Ya...gawd forbid we take steps to curb issues with GHG, without crippling our economies.

 

[Tonington]

That's just it Bear, what steps have been taken here?

 

[CDNBear]

I've seen several...I know that they don't meet the demands of the eco nuts, but hey...some of us have to feed our families more then rice and home grown tofu...

 

[Tonington]

You know very well that I'm not in favour of anything which will ruin our economy.

I don't consider equal opportunities (subsidy) for renewable energy production to be detrimental to our economy.

 

[CDNBear]

You know very well that I'm not in favour of anything which will ruin our economy.

Sorry...I didn't mean to infer that you were...

I don't consider equal opportunities (subsidy) for renewable energy production to be detrimental to our economy.

Niether do I Tonnington, but everyone seems to dog every step of this process, if it falls short of blowing up gas stations and burrying oil wells.

 

[Tonington]

Ya, hahah, I'm no eco-nut

Anyone who advocates that ought to be given the same as any other terrorist.

I don't like to beat up on America, due to the large amount that goes on here already, but I do find their energy priorities to be a little screwy. Heres how the 2004 energy grants breaks down:

I recently read some info which I found very interesting. Supposing we do finally stabilize the GHG concentrations. It's not inconceivable that some day we may actually need that carbon for precisely the reason we don't want it now...I doubt an ice age would treat us well, though I find those prospects unlikely anytime soon (1,000's years).

It strikes me odd how this whole process is unfolding. For years it was the fossil fuel lobby who was partly responsible for the skeptical and misleading science out there. Now they fully recognize the way the tide is moving, and now their money is well spent on political friends. Keep the subsidies going, laud the possibilities of clean technology, when we could simply use renewables, though that doesn't bode well for corporations with so much capital built up on an existing energy regime.

Australia particularly has paid the coal companies well, when they have the unique situation of some radioactive rocks which sound very promising.
http://watthead.blogspot.com/2005/11/australia-explores-hot-dry-rock.html
If anything, this is where subsidies on research should be spent, at least on an equal footing with fossil fuels.

One drawback, a steady supply of clean energy not prone to global fluctuations in energy markets makes it undesirable for electric companies. Perhaps public energy isn't so bad...

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

ya got some war mongering aussie who licks the boots of bush as a hobby...he states that the iraq war is a good thing.....

All these conservative Raygun admiring right wing nut jobs patting one another on the back.....it's all perposterous....

they are doing nothing to stop me from living in a toxic waste dump of a planet .....

they keep testing the MPP's blood and toxins are evident...everything is getting poisoned daily and they are talking about some plan 20 years from now.....it's so much horse hockey......

they worry about money...fukcing money....they have all the money in the fukcing universe....we get fukced over ..

our food is tastless, smellness paper...has anyone smelled a salad lately...when i was a kid one could tell yer mom was making one the minute ya got home...now ya stick yer shnoz in the thing and can't smell hardly a thing...so you cover it in Kraft poison flavouring.....

money...who needs it...lets toss the money out and become equal ..lets turn commie ...true commies.....this other choice is inane...unless these people fix what they destroyed.....
I don't want to breathe and eat this junk no more......

Harper the scum bag born from the reform party ..that party of bigots started by some jerkwater moronic red necks....Do you really think he wants us to live in a better quality of life...he has other concerns

 

[CDNBear]

Ton, I wouldn't argue with public energy, but the only problem with that notion is that politicians will inevitably be involved....we all know how that ends.

I see your point on how the US is spending the forementioned capital, and I would whole heartedly agree that the lobyists have been earning their bonus's.

Pitty that.

 

[CDNBear]

ya got some war mongering aussie who licks the boots of bush as a hobby...he states that the iraq war is a good thing.....

All these conservative Raygun admiring right wing nut jobs patting one another on the back.....it's all perposterous....

they are doing nothing to stop me from living in a toxic waste dump of a planet .....

they keep testing the MPP's blood and toxins are evident...everything is getting poisoned daily and they are talking about some plan 20 years from now.....it's so much horse hockey......

they worry about money...fukcing money....they have all the money in the fukcing universe....we get fukced over ..

our food is tastless, smellness paper...has anyone smelled a salad lately...when i was a kid one could tell yer mom was making one the minute ya got home...now ya stick yer shnoz in the thing and can't smell hardly a thing...so you cover it in Kraft poison flavouring.....

money...who needs it...lets toss the money out and become equal ..lets turn commie ...true commies.....this other choice is inane...unless these people fix what they destroyed.....
I don't want to breathe and eat this junk no more......

Harper the scum bag born from the reform party ..that party of bigots started by some jerkwater moronic red necks....Do you really think he wants us to live in a better quality of life...he has other concerns

Well that was interesting, to say the very least...

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

Well that was interesting, to say the very least...

duude he does nothing for the enviorment except put off what he should be doing tommorrow...you protect that fine....

 

[Tonington]

Ton, I wouldn't argue with public energy, but the only problem with that notion is that politicians will inevitably be involved....we all know how that ends.

I see your point on how the US is spending the forementioned capital, and I would whole heartedly agree that the lobyists have been earning their bonus's.

I made a thread about how deregulation of the electric grid is working down south too
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/consumer-awareness/66937-new-push-regulate-power-costs.html

 

[CDNBear]

I made a thread about how deregulation of the electric grid is working down south too
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/consumer-awareness/66937-new-push-regulate-power-costs.html

Thanx Ton, will look at it...

duude he does nothing for the enviorment except put off what he should be doing tommorrow...you protect that fine....

My guess is you missed all the grown up talk in here...non?

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

Thanx Ton, will look at it...


My guess is you missed all the grown up talk in here...non?

no...but it's all the same jargon....it all happens in another lifetime with no real change in law....

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

Thanx Ton, will look at it...


My guess is you missed all the grown up talk in here...non?

and erm you don't really answer things Bunny Bear..ya just tell everyone else they did not see something you did....which is starting to look pretty DIM from where i sit.....

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

Looking at the news on this....load of bunk thrown at the world by meglamanicas hell bent on destroying the earth...like i said..no laws were passed just idle chit chat to look good to their minions that vote for these bastards....

 

[CDNBear]

no...but it's all the same jargon....it all happens in another lifetime with no real change in law....

So evrything is about law enforcement? Don't you guys on the left keep screaming about the right wanting to many laws as it is???

Which is it you want?

and erm you don't really answer things Bunny Bear..ya just tell everyone else they did not see something you did....which is starting to look pretty DIM from where i sit.....

Well the fact that you have assumed that I support bigotry, the Alliance, and Conservative Fundamentalism, ya...I'ld say uou missed some stuff...

Turn a light on, or at the very least...go back through my posts and witness for yourself my feelings on such things as the environment. Let alone my feelings on neo conservatism. I think sanctus summed it up best...which really will put a crimp in your stockings..."Bear, do you champion every PC cause?"...and he wasn't asking nicely.

An anomoly...and enigma...a dyametrically apposed though process, wrapped up in one critter...No wonder you and the rest of my detractors keep getting lost.

 

[TomG]

In his book “Collapse” Jared Diamond traces the collapse of ancient and modern societies to environmental causes. He also tells of Polynesians who arrived at Easter Island (an island where fishing requires deep-water canoes), and over time chopped down all the trees on the island that could be used to make their canoes. When their canoes could no longer be repaired or new ones build, they were trapped on an Island where they could not feed themselves adequately. Eventually they ate rodents, insects and likely themselves. Why did they cut down all their trees? In part, to make devices for transporting all those stone heads from the quarries to the beach. Why so many stone heads? Their clan-chiefs were into ‘one-ups-man-ship‘ contests (Who could have the biggest head). How were the stone heads placed upright on the beaches? It was a mystery until Diamond asked some present day Easter Islanders. They demonstrated by raising one, and saying nobody asked us before.

Diamond also tells of present day Pacific islanders who fish their lagoon with cyanide and dynamite. They know they are killing their reef, and eventually the reef will disappear and their island along with it. They say ‘Yes but our children must eat today:’ Diamond also tells of the copper mining companies in Montana that declared bankruptcy when their mines were no longer profitable and stuck the state with a multi-billion dollar liability for cleanup of mines that discharge toxic waste into water ways. That is us today. Diamond is a professor of geography and sometimes presidential advisor he won a Pulitzer Prize for his book “Guns, Germs and Steel.”

In his book “Globalization and its Discontents,” Joseph Stiglitz tells of the economics and international financial institutions that maintain an order where something like a quarter of the world’s population live on less than $2.00/day and millions live on less than $1.00/day. He tells how the institutions work to ensure that the globalized markets overwhelmingly favour the rich developed nations. He tells how the rules of the game, imposed by the IMF and US Treasury have the effect of requiring the world’s poorest people to finance the consumption binge of the richest (Currency reserve requirements have to be held in T-bills). He also shows that the only countries that might be successful at economic development are those that didn’t follow the IMF rules and accepted the harsh penalities. Joseph Stiglitz is on the faculty at Columbia University, has been chief economic advisor to presidents, executive president of the World Bank and a Nobel Prize winner in Economics.

Grown up enough? And how is it that we feed our families in the rich west today: By the noble undertaking of starving children elsewhere? By some estimates maybe 20,000 children die everyday mostly due to lack of clean water, and we nobly feed our families. And we have a PM that wears funny clothes while posing for leader family pictures--and he can’t figure out whether to have a hat on or off. He was said to be instrumental in brokering an agreement that ensures business as usual will prevail though. He probably feeds his family just fine, and maybe takes the hat off for supper. That is us today.

And so, are we today like the old Easter Islanders and chopping down the last tree that would be the means of our eventual escape? But who might rescue us, and where would we escape to anyway?

 

[Avro]

Ya...gawd forbid we take steps to curb issues with GHG, without crippling our economies.

So, you're saying we need to curb greenhouse gasses then?

Why?

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

So evrything is about law enforcement? Don't you guys on the left keep screaming about the right wanting to many laws as it is???

Which is it you want?
Well if you want to have corporations stop polluting you better hell have some law with a punch...I met a kid who wanted to be an enviromental lawyer..thought she could serve mother nature ....I pointed out unless she works for an organization like Green Peace she is actually only going to be finding ways for her corporations to pollute and get around existing laws.....

Well the fact that you have assumed that I support bigotry, the Alliance, and Conservative Fundamentalism, ya...I'ld say uou missed some stuff...
Let's get something straught right now....once you tell me yer a conservative i say to you inadverntatly all of the above are in play...Hell the conservatives have tons of native lackies and Sikh lackies as window dressing
Turn a light on, or at the very least...go back through my posts and witness for yourself my feelings on such things as the environment. Let alone my feelings on neo conservatism. I think sanctus summed it up best...which really will put a crimp in your stockings..."Bear, do you champion every PC cause?"...and he wasn't asking nicely.

An anomoly...and enigma...a dyametrically apposed though process, wrapped up in one critter...No wonder you and the rest of my detractors keep getting lost.

you are easy to get lost in Bear.....You diss Trudeau, praise Mike Harris, think Harper is the right guy in parliment....

This is the problem with a free thinker who for some reason has abadonned his common sense to take up the cause of conservative party, try to right the thing, and fail to see the merit of the Liberal party of Canada....

I think you are a very confused individual when it comes to politics...somewhere you made the wrong choice and you know it....so all this anger comes across everyone's screen.....
besides that...i don't know why but i like you as a poster.....

I mean i can't buy this sort of stuff to post off of....
i mean trying to to make right the conservative party..heh heh....it's ruining your life man....but it makes for great fun for us....