To the editor:
I have to shake my head at the strange fixation some people have with the obsolete Kyoto Accord.
The world and the global economy have both changed dramatically since Kyoto was first implemented. It's time to move forward and come up with a new agreement that reflects the present and not the past.
What sense is there in extending the Kyoto Accord if the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG) are not part of the accord, namely China and the United States?
Kyoto covers less than 30 per cent of total global emissions and only requires China - the world's single largest source of GHG emissions - to produce a national climate-change plan without any legally binding reduction targets.
The only way to achieve real GHG reductions and real results is through a new international climate-change agreement that includes commitments from all major emitters, including the rapidly emerging economies of China, India and Brazil.
Clearly, the way forward on reducing GHG emissions is to build on the agreements that were reached last year in Cancun. These agreements cover three-quarters of total global emissions and represent a significant improvement on Kyoto.
Every country needs to target their GHG emissions, notably in the transportation and energy sectors, and they need to be able to do so in ways that are flexible enough to meet local conditions and circumstances.
In Canada, we're certainly making progress in getting electric vehicles on the road and shutting down dirty coal-fired generating plants in the east.
In British Columbia, significant efforts are also being made to tap into the province's plentiful clean-energy resources and to develop new clean-energy technologies we can export to the world.
Flexibility, not rigidity and obsolete accords like Kyoto, is the way forward.
That is what will allow each country's reduction efforts to work in concert with other countries and support the larger global effort to reduce GHG emissions and fight climate change.
Michael McBratney
Pitt Meadows