So What??!!

Quitting Kyoto could cost Canada down the road

"Few issues have attracted international attention to Canadian policy like the withdrawal from the Kyoto accord. There was a wave of international criticism. Will Canada face a real cost?"

[---]

"Canada’s Kyoto withdrawal was an unusually big news story for a country that gets little mention, playing as a big deal in international media. It was a top Web-hit story for the BBC. Reporters kept asking U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern about Canada. Canada’s emissions story jumped to the masses. It could be the new seal hunt. Japan and Russia won’t meet Kyoto targets either, but Canada withdrew and got headlines."

Frankly, I'm glad to see Canada lose it's goody-two-shoes reputation, and there's nothing wrong with taking a stand for common sense when everyone else is out to lunch.

"Still, some foreign officials don’t expect much short-term consequence for Canada. It wasn’t a surprise to them. They knew Canada wouldn’t reach its Kyoto target or buy carbon credits to comply. The Harper government wasn’t going to enter a second, post-2012 phase of Kyoto. They expect Mr. Harper to act when the United States does; the 2012 presidential election may be Canada’s climate policy-maker. Many foreign governments already saw a non-Kyoto Canada.

“There are political implications to abandoning Kyoto, but Canada has already suffered them,” said Michael Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

It causes diplomatic gripes and was probably a factor in Canada’s lost UN Security Council bid."

That's a two-fer, as far as I'm concerned.

Same with you, Justin. An S-Bomb from you makes it three-fer.