“Later this week we will release Canada‘s greenhouse-gas inventory and it will show that Canada‘s [level of emissions] is now 35% higher than the Kyoto targets that the Liberals set . To put that into perspective … that would mean that today we would have to take every train, plane and automobile off the streets of Canada. That is not realistic.” 

Ambrose pointed out that the previous government committed, as part of the Kyoto accord, to cut emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2008-12. But far from taking this as an example of Liberal incompetence or insincerity and promising to do better, Ambrose used it to argue that pursuing the Kyoto targets is unreasonable.

This, clearly, is another step in the process of undermining Kyoto and moving Canada into the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, the group of six international backsliders that account for more than half the world’s greenhouse gas production and are hell-bent on supporting only “voluntary solutions.”

Thus we have a situation analogous to a smugly underperforming student (Canada) that hasn’t the backbone or the integrity to stick it out at a school with somewhat rigorous standards (Kyoto), and chooses instead to go hang out in the mall with the other underachievers. This is a stupid choice for a 15-year-old, even one who is living at home with indulgent parents. But it’s a travesty when a Minister of the Crown sets that out as an example of international irresponsibility.