In a Southland community newspaper Invercargill MP Eric Roy highlights one of the crucial flaws in the Kyoto protocol - its failure to take account of industrial pollution in China.
Since 1990, Southland’s Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter has managed to reduce its CO2 emissions by 40 percent. As Mr Roy points out:
“For every ton of aluminium that is produced there is two tons of greenhouse gases, but in China it is eight and half tons of greenhouse gases per ton (of aluminium produced) ” .
He then states that: “In the last 15 years China has opened 15 new smelters”.
In New Zealand, many on the left believe that the Tiwai smelter should be closed so that emissions can be reduced to 1990 levels. It doesn’t seem to dawn on these softheaded do-gooders that closing the smelter would actually lead to increased CO2 emissions at the global level.
Population growth and easy credit that are the main factors behind New Zealand’s increasing CO2 emissions, not industrial activity. Either rapidly developing countries should be compelled to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, or it should be replaced with something else.
At present all it seems to be doing is accelerating western de-industrialisation.
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Personally, I stay very wary of all this global warming/climate change stuff floating around. I can see there is a lot of evidence that says mankind is responsible for it (as is crammed into me my school), but at the same time I've seen evidence that contradicts this.
If global warming is mankind's fault, then penalising nations like New Zealand or the United Kingdom is not the answer. According to some sources, the UK contributes about 2% to mankind's total carbon dioxide output. Other sources have shown that if the UK switched off EVERYTHING powered by fossil fuels, the PRC would make up the difference in a matter of months.
Sam's inclinations are correct. If all of the 180+ pledgers to the Kyoto Protocols met their emission reductions (and only a couple actually are), China alone would still add four pounds of emissions for every one these combined nations reduced. India would go tit-for-tat.
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