Rex Murphy Commentary on Prime Minister Harper’s Position on a Post-Kyoto Agreement

On last night's edition of CBC's, The National, Rex Murphy's commentry articulated Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s position on a post Kyoto agreement. It was one of his best commentaries and it added a lot of creditability to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s argument that the Canadian government will not enter into "binding agreements" that deal with climate change, unless those agreements are binding on all the world's CO2 emitters, major and minor.

In the blog, Dispatch From The Socialist Gulag in a post titled, “Rex Murphy on Canada's global warming position” there is a link to last night’s commentary on CBC that should be required viewing for those on either side of the Kyoto debate.

Below is an excerpt from the Rex Murphy's commentry on CBC's, The National last night:

If global warming is the imminent and catastrophic peril to the earth that everyone from the IPCC to David Suzuki to Al Gore and every socially-conscious celebrity on the planet have been telling us it is, then there can be no serious argument for Canada to make mandatory commitments, while exempting the giant emitters of the world such as China and India. This is like plugging a leak while ignoring a flood.
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Everyone has a vague, soft wish to "do the right thing" for the planet - and at the level of gesture - green light bulbs, more intense recycling, hybrid SUVs, everyone more or less feels good about going along.

But what the participants at Bali will be looking for from Canada, Europe, the US, the industrialized world, are precisely those hard targets and commitments that Mr. Harper, very logically, unless equivalent cuts are made for all, has said make no sense. Cuts that would impose real restrictions on the Canadian economy, slow growth - this will not be painless regardless of what enthusiasts say - perhaps start a real conflict in this country over the oil sands - while giving a pass to much larger countries producing much greater emissions.

Are we really going to do that - while two of the largest economies of the 21st century make the leap into unregulated, unprecedented growth?

That's a two-tier solution to global warming, and unless I misread our recent history, Canadians are not fond of two-tier solutions.