Canada to Become First Country to Formally Withdraw from Kyoto Protocol

While George W. Bush withdrew US support from the Kyoto Protocol, he did not withdraw the US signature. That is a step that no country has taken, until now. Today, Canada's conservative government announced that it would withdraw formally from the mitigation regime, under which it committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6% from 1990 levels during the 2008-12 compliance period (see here). Its stated reason: because emissions from the US and China are not covered by the Protocol, the treaty cannot be an effective mitigation device and should be jettisoned in favor of something new. It's ulterior motive: oil sands, which give Canada the third largest quantity of known oil reserves in the world (after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela).

Producing oil from the sands is a potentially lucrative business (especially if the US eventually approves the Keystone pipeline), but also a very dirty business, emitting at least three times the carbon (not to mention other hazardous air pollutants) of conventional oil production processes (see here). So, Harper's government is not interested in a new and improved mitigation regime but with no mitigation regime at all.

This hardly makes Canada a special case; the US is in the same boat, which Japan and Russia reportedly are getting ready to climb aboard. Harper's ideal scenario was that Kyoto would die at Durban. That it did not must have been a disappointment to his government. Still, the timing of Canada's announcement is interesting, coming just a day after the end of the Durban meeting. Given the Kyoto Protocol's persistent weakness (bordering on irrelevance), Harper's conservative government hardly needed to withdraw from the Protocol at this point; it could have gone on ignoring it, as it has done since taking office after the 2006 elections. The move could well backfire in the same way that President Bush's 2001 denunciation of the Kyoto Protocol arguably backfired, by removing the US delegation's voice from the negotiating table.

Whatever the reasons and the timing, one point is perfectly clear (regardless of deceptive comments to the contrary from Canadian government officials): this decision is not about building a better international regime for reducing greenhouse gas emissions; it is about black oil and cold cash.