Canada’s Debate

I was flipping through an editorial by Ezra Levant the other day and I caught something which made me chuckle. You see, Ezra Levant is a bottom-scraping Conservative hyperbolist… sort of an Anne Coulter, only with hairer legs and a slightly less libellous attitude. While his tongue may not be as severe, his academic background and intelligence (however poorly applied it may be) delude him into thinking that he has genuine insight.

This latest editorial was a critique of a recent lawsuit being brought to the Supreme Court by Chris Palaire, trying to force the Court to order the Government to create a Kyoto action plan. I agree with Ezra inasmuch as this is a serious stretching of the Court’s jurisprudence; on principle the courts should not legislate, and since none of the previous Acts of Government regarding Kyoto legally oblige the current government to do more than they have done, I don’t see what standing the Court has to intervene. What I find amusing is the bombastic criticism of Kyoto that Levant is engaged in. It’s pretty stupid so I don’t delve in great detail, I will just say this: He proves to the world he is an idiot by defeating his own argument, and I want to share that with you.

Kyoto compliance is impossible without shrinking our economy by one third, and then shrinking it more for every new baby or immigrant, because the amount of carbon we’re allowed to emit never grows.

Where does he get the “one third” number? Well, earlier in the paragraph he points out that Canada’s GDP has increased by 55% since 1990. See, according to Ezra the only way to reduce emissions would be to “undo” all that economic growth and return to our pre-1990 GDP level. What is interesting is that Canada’s emissions haven’t grown by 55% since 1990. Sure they’ve gone up, and the government has done nothing to fight them… but economic growth has outstripped emissions growth, which demonstrates that intensity is not fixed to economic output. Then again, anyone with a grade 9 education should know that… Now, Canada at this point probably cannot meet its Kyoto obligations by 2012, in no small part due to the stalling and fear-mongering that Ezra and his comrades engage in; but the supposition that reducing emissions without reducing GDP is impossible is flat-out idiotic, and I think we should all show Ezra Levant the ‘respect’ that he deserves as a result.