Sunday, March 18, 2007

Low Hanging Fruit

Today's fruit du jour comes to us via the gong show that is Tory environmental policy.

In the Toronto Star today, we learn that the Conservative government is considering foreign credits to meet emissions targets.

It wasn't so very long ago that this bunch of naysayers was claiming that such tactics were "do nothings", and had "no effect" other than to put Canadian monies in the hands of foreign economies.

The Conservative government might let Canadian polluters meet greenhouse gas emission targets by investing in foreign projects, Environment Minister John Baird suggested yesterday.

No decision has been made, Baird said in a telephone news conference after meeting in Potsdam, Germany, with counterparts from the G-8 industrialized nations, China, India and three other "emerging economies" to discuss climate change.

He said the government is considering a policy reversal that would allow investments in what the Kyoto Protocol calls the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).


While I'm not entirely thrilled with the whole "emission credits" concept in the first place, I find it mostly bad comedy being played out here, with the Conservatives repeatedly cancelling and then resurrecting policy as they bumble their way through the environment portfolio. (Which, in this case overlaps with Foreign Affairs heavily - but of course, Mr. MacKay is so busy licking Ms. Rice's boots that he probably has forgotten that he has a job to do...so we get two really bad images for the price of one!)

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