On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Hugh Winsor's column in today's Globe and Mail deals with the different strategies of Canadian proponents and opponents of the Kyoto climate-change accord. Winsor notes that the plan's opponents tend to criticize the plan's possible short-term effects of Canada raifying the deal. Kyoto opponents, of course, spin apocalyptical scenarios that have, so far, gone unanswered by the government.
For an example of this, see here. It's been reported that some government estimates say that Kyoto could cost Canada 200,000 jobs and $16.5-billion in economic growth. What does the Prime Minister do? Brush it off; he doesn't even try to refute it. In failing to counter the short-term criticism, he looks weak,and the advantage is ceded to Ralph Klein and the oilpatch.
In the long run, Winsor argues, the arguments for Kyoto are stronger, and he also says that ratifying the deal is a moral imperative. He's right on both points, especially the latter one; enironmental conservation and protection is often not the most economically viable path, but, for many people, your humble scribe included, it's the morally right thing to do.
As for the reported economic consequences? Check this out from the column.
Yes, the economy will not grow quite as fast under Kyoto as it might under a no-holds-barred approach. But the estimate that cabinet is having difficulty admitting to is 200,000 fewer jobs over a decade, not the end of the world given that the labour-force growth in the first eight months of this year was 386,000 jobs.
Hmm, interesting. Also, $16.5-billion in economic growth lost over the next ten years seems like a lot, to be sure. However, that's about six months' growth if the economy grows at about a rate of 3%. No worse a blip than an economic slowdown that happens every handful of years.
And the probability of new jobs in the new, carbon-reduced economy is equally high.
Bingo! Now you've got it -- jobs in the industries that will be stimulated by cutting emissions.
Can anybody say Ballard Power Systems?
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