October 20, 2003
Global environmentalists got an unexpected stinging slap in the face last week from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The entire environmental community has been waiting with bated breath for Putin to add his signature on papers ratifying its well-touted Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, on Sept. 29 Putin was expected to open the World Climate Change Conference by announcing Russian ratification of the 1997 Kyoto global-warming treaty.
He didn’t.
Russia’s ratification is needed to enforce Kyoto’s global requirements for reduced greenhouse gas emissions, with vast economic consequences, and it’s not forthcoming.
The silence from the environmental community is deafening.
So sure were leading environmentalists of Russia jumping on the Kyoto bandwagon, they were left reeling.
According to Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak, even anti-Kyoto protagonists were taken by surprise. Said Fred L. Smith, president of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute: "This is the most important development in the public debate over global warming since President Bush’s decision."
President Bush affirmed two years ago that the United States would not ratify Kyoto, opening him to abuse at home and abroad. Bush stood his ground, antagonizing the likes of Senator Hillary Clinton and other Dems.
Making matters worse, there was nothing wishy-washy about how the leader of a country that includes Siberia feels about global warming. Putin’s chief economic advisor Andrei Illarionov brought it all down to dollars and sense. Noting that the United States and Australia calculate "they cannot bear the economic consequences of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, Illarionov added "If they aren't rich enough to deal with those questions, my question is whether Russia is much richer than the U.S. or Australia."
And if this is too bitter medicine for raving environmentalist activists, Russian scientists were even more stridently anti-Kyoto. How the activists must have squirmed to hear Yuri Izrael declare: "All the scientific evidence seems to support the same general conclusions, that the Kyoto Protocol is overly expensive, ineffective and based on bad science."
But if environmental activists are in a blue funk with the message from Moscow, think of the Canadian contingent that spent one cool million to be in Russia to meet with the president within days of the World Climate Change Conference.
Although Canada’s lavish Governor General Adrienne Clarkson called her unsuccessful northern mission a circumpolar exercise and took a lot of flak from a flurry of angry letters to the editor, the money for the junket came from Canadian foreign affairs.
From Moscow, the environmental movement got news it did not want to hear.
Canadians in Moscow, including Maurice Strong, architect of the Kyoto Protocol, got total rejection.
Not all the wine sipping, the caviar, the being able to rub shoulders with UN poster boys and socialist ex-premiers budged Putin an inch.
With another Russian winter coming, there is more to worry about than the theory of the Canadian GG’s circumpolaring.
Meanwhile, the Canadian government just spent one million of your hard earned tax dollars for something that should go down as `Mission Unaccomplished’.