Canada's greenhouse gas emissions will continue to soar in the next few years, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Tuesday. Harper projected in a policy speech that by 2010 Canada's emissions would be about 46 percent above the targets it had agreed to hit by 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. That's up from 35 percent above the target in 2004, the latest year for which data are available.

"This is not just a matter of flipping a switch," said Harper, defending his open declaration that Canada will not be able to meet its Kyoto targets. "After a decade of inaction on air pollution and greenhouse gases, Canada has one of the worst records in the developed world."

He blames the previous Liberal government, which he defeated in January 2006, for signing on to Kyoto and presiding over most of the increases. His projections also appeared to be a tacit admission that the green programs he had put in place so far would do little in the next few years to alter the upward path of the emissions, blamed for global warming.

He said that based on existing information, economic and population growth, and technology, Canada's emissions would climb to the equivalent of about 825 megatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2010 from 758 megatonnes in 2004. Canada's commitment is to get down to 563 megatonnes.

Environment Minister John Baird, confronted by reporters, disagreed that his government's policies would have no effect. "We're going to come forward with the actions, and we'll let you judge the actions, and I think they will be considerably better than anything that any minister of the environment in any other (Canadian) government brought forward," he said. "We can't do 10 years of work overnight."

He said he was hard at work at regulations that would for the first time ever limit emissions both of greenhouse gases and air pollution.
(Por Randall Palmer, Planet Ark, 07/02/2007)