There are three kinds of lies, White lies, damned lies and statistics.

Contrary to the focus of much of the media on Canada and the U.S.“backing down” at the Bali conference on climate change, the real story may be quite the opposite. Opposition halted only after the conference agreed not to state specific emission reductions as targets for the year 2020. This was the big sticking point.

Canadian Environment Minister John Baird had objected to targets of 25 to 40 percent as “unworkable” and “unachievable”. He was right. And in the conference’s final draft, the specific emission reduction targets are left vague.

The elimination of those specific targets are important for another reason. The Bali “consensus” was still grounded fundamentally in the Kyoto protocol.That protocol would produce only a 1/10 of one percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions if all signatories complied to the fullest extent. The reason for it is that Kyoto allowed the biggest polluters, India and China included, to opt out of its goals.

At Bali you had the hypocritical sight of 190 countries meeting to decide on targets that only 38 of those countries committed themselves to meet. Oddly enough, those 38 represented most of the liberal west. So in that Pacific paradise you had the egregious site of some 150 polluting states dictating new terms of submission to the few who had agreed to do anything about it. Could anyone blame Canada and the U.S. for wanting to get a level playing field and have every country sign on without the excuse that India and China use that it would interfere with their economic growth?

Whatever one may conclude about CO2 emissions, the reality is that even the eco-theocrats now talk less about global warming than about climate change. Climate change happens constantly. What kind of crisis we are facing, if any at all, is still very much in dispute. Since 1998,emissions have risen annually but there has been no increase in the earth’s temperatures. You won’t hear that inconvenient truth very often. One thing we do know is that there is a climate change industry that has emerged with very strange bedfellows.

The current eco-theocracy started as a reaction against industrial globalization. It was pushed by the left. But a funny thing happened on the way to Greenpeace. Kyoto happened.The dirty little secret behind Kyoto is that it created a new industry. Carbon emissions trading. That market is so big now that the left has been joined by a new constituency in the global business community it opposed. Both exerted pressure on governments to meet a Kyoto agenda that could not possibly help the planet’s environment. Kyoto was on the one hand a façade behind which emissions traders hid and on the other a pacifier for the eco-theocrats to claim some victory. In the end politicians got to harness some votes. Sadly the public was very badly done by. Here’s another inconvenient truth. As a result of Kyoto, Canadians had to fork over $1.3 billion just two years ago to buy emissions credits from Russia which had met its much lowered standards because its economy had slowed. Canada’s emissions had actually risen much higher since Kyoto, though this country is a signatory, than the United States which did not sign.

Bali may have actually signaled the end of this two-tier system. By eliminating precise
targets, the door is left open for negotiations over the next two years to bring all nations into agreement on achievable targets. And it was not just Canada and the United States that demanded this. Australia’s newly-elected Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declared that his government would not support 25 to 40 percent targeted cuts in emissions by 2020. Trade Minister Simon Crean announced that developing countries like China and India would have to accept tough binding targets too before Australia would ever agree to any post-Kyoto agreement beyond 2012.

Even more surprising was the statement from Britain’s Trade and Development Minister
Gareth Thomas, who told the BBC that developing countries would also be required to
accept targets for CO2 emissions. And U.S. Senator John Kerry said at Bali that he had notified the international community that a rejection by China and other emerging economies to cut their own greenhouse gases would make it almost impossible for any U.S. administration to get a new global climate treaty through the U.S. Senate — “even under a Democratic president.”

The little secret from Bali is that the “road map” that was adopted without emissions
targets may have signaled that the U.S. and Canada have galvanized key allies who may
finally be saying enough is enough to the eco-theocrats. And signaling a touch new stance
against the world’s biggest polluters like India and China. The times may be a changin’.

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