There is a more sensible challenge about whether we should. This is not a question about whether we should eventually meet the 6% reduction targets that were set by the Kyoto protocol for Canada. We’ll clearly have to do a lot more on the order of 80-90% eventually. The sensible question is whether it is wise to do so within this Kyoto period now that we’re in the awkward position of being so far away from our goals.
First of all there is a great deal of misunderstanding about what “meeting the Kyoto targets” means. A lot of people see the 6% figure they know the Kyoto period ends in 2012 and figure “we be to decrease our emissions by 6% over the next 5 years. If that were all that was asked the question would be ludicrous. We should be expecting to reduce a great deal more than 1.5% annually if we want to reach any sensible ultimate target so Kyoto would be the dance it was meant to be.
Unfortunately to begin with the aim is 6% below what our emissions were in 1990. Our emissions now are at least 30% higher than they were in 1990. So our Kyoto target is 36/130 of today’s emissions or about 28% more than a quarter of our emissions. That’s a lot harder to envision in a 5-year period.
But it’s actually a lot worse than that because the Kyoto targets are for an average of the 5 year period between the beginning of 2008 and the end of 2012. So if we undergo a steady decrease in emissions over the period we need to hit the Kyoto aim right in the middle of the period at the end of June. 2010 and act decreasing to about 55% below today’s levels over the next 5 years. That’s about 11% of today’s levels every year for 5 years. Kyoto wasn’t designed to be addressed this way. When we agreed to 6% reductions below 1990 levels we weren’t thinking that our emissions would continue to change in the lead up to the Kyoto period. Nobody imagined you’d have to have these preposterous cuts so far below the Kyoto target just to cater the target over the whole period.
Renovating the automobile fleet with cars that have higher emissions standards takes more than 5 years. Subway tunnels take longer than 5 years to build as do rail infrastructure and trains. If we put every lick of determination into it we could just maybe retrofit 20 percent of our building stock in that time. It would take massive increases in fuel prices and a lot of bus transit and carpooling hunkering down in reduced.
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Related article:
http://danforthgreens.ca/should-we-meet-kyoto/
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