Chill out
Why worry about global warming when even the UN says Canada will be better off for it?
Terry ONeill - June 4, 2007
Wait a moment. Canada is cold. Damn cold. If anyone should be happy about global warming, shouldn't it be us? That's the inconvenient truth about climate change that the Al Gores, Elizabeth Mays and David Suzukis of the world downplay, dismiss or deny. A slightly warmer Earth could be a better place for everything from tourism to agriculture. That's not just speculation, either. Climate history shows that warmer periods--including ones much warmer than ours--were better times to be alive.
Even the alarmist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--the UN agency that's pushed Canada and the world into a state of panic over the alleged adverse climatic impacts of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide--has conceded that the effects of rising temperatures will not be entirely bad, especially on already prosperous, high-latitude countries such as Canada.
More surprising still to those whose diet of climate change information comes solely from the mainstream news media or deep-green lobby groups is that studies conducted by U.S. experts conclude that the economic impact of global warming on Canada will be more positive than negative. In fact, the growth rate of Canada's $1.1-trillion-a-year gross domestic product will increase in a warmer world, not decrease.
This is not to say there won't be lifestyle adjustments to make and endangered species to care for, or that lower-latitude, poorer countries won't need our help in coping with climate change. It does mean Canadians are not getting the whole picture when they hear for the umpteenth time, from everyone from Environment Minister John Baird to their neighbourhood primary school science teacher, the familiar global warming litany: that humanity's use of carbon-based fuels is causing the world to warm at an alarming rate; that such warming will have catastrophic effects; that reductions of carbon emissions can slow and eventually end overheating; and, therefore, that countries around the world must band together to cut their carbon emissions.
It's a mantra that drives the Kyoto Protocol, under which Canada committed itself to cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. And it is at the heart of the Conservative government's rationale for its "made in Canada" plan, made public April 26, to stop the rise of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 and then to cut them by 20 per cent by 2020.
In rejecting the Kyoto target, the Tories cited its devastating economic impacts. Fraser Institute policy analyst Nicholas Schneider calculated in April that meeting the Kyoto commitment would cost Canadians $100 billion a year in forgone economic production or income. Baird figures his more modest plan will cost the economy $7 billion to $8 billion a year.
But if global warming will cause Canada's economy to grow, any expenditure to fight global warming actually works against Canada's national interest. Of course, since Canada produces only about two per cent of global carbon emissions, it's highly unlikely anything the country does to limit greenhouse gas emissions will have an impact on rising temperatures. Moreover, there's still a hot debate over just what's causing the Earth to get hotter; for example, there's now strong evidence that natural cycles, spurred by solar activity, are responsible for the trend. If true, Canada could kill its entire industrial output overnight, park all its cars and trucks, and freeze in the dark through its long winter, and the Earth would still keep getting warmer (until, that is, it starts on a natural cooling cycle).
Global warming skeptics have long argued that, with so much uncertainty surrounding the cause of global warming and a high likelihood that our anti-warming efforts will be inconsequential, it's ludicrous to rush headlong into costly Kyoto measures. Now, with news that the country can benefit in a warming world, it makes less sense to throw billions of dollars a year into Kyoto-style efforts, and more sense to completely re-evaluate our global warming strategies.
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