EDMONTON – Canadian Alliance environment critic Bob Mills is beginning
what he calls the tough task of making CA appear to voters as a
political party with a credible environmental policy.
He is doing it by trashing what many environmentalists consider a
cornerstone of modern environmental policy – the Kyoto Accord to reduce
climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions.
The Kyoto Accord is a fraud, Mills told delegates to the Alliance’s
biennial policy meeting on April 4.
It will cost the economy billions of dollars, make little dent in
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global warming and mainly act as a “United Nations social policy” to
transfer money from rich to developing countries.
“Implementing Kyoto would be a bureaucratic nightmare, creating a lot
of jobs for bureaucrats trying to figure out costs and credits,” the
Red Deer MP said.
“I don’t believe it would work.”
Mills said that to be credible with Canadian voters, particularly young
voters and women, the Alliance must do more than oppose. It must admit
global warming is a problem, prove Kyoto is not a solution and promote
a better answer.
The better alternative, he said, is a combination of conservation and
promotion of new, less polluting forms of energy production, including
ethanol and wind.
“If we can communicate this, a lot of people who have never considered
voting for us before might look at us as a party with an environmental
conscience,” he said.
“So it is important we have a policy for the next election and this is
the beginning. I believe it, but we also have a political motive here.”
Mills was speaking to the converted at the Alliance convention.
Delegate after delegate went to the microphones to suggest Kyoto is bad
policy imposed by radical environmentalists and anti-industry Liberals.
Some suggested the entire global warming scare is a fraud, simply
reflectiving the ebbs and flows of world temperatures through history.
In a later interview, Mills said it is important the party accept that
carbon dioxide is an increasing factor in the atmosphere, that
temperatures are rising and that solutions are required.
He acknowledged the Liberals have so far successfully branded Alliance
as anti-environment in the public mind.
“It is not true, but we have to acknowledge the perception and work to
correct it,” he said.
“We start by asking the question, is there concern about global
warming? The answer is yes, so how can we provide a responsible
solution?”
He was speaking during a week in which environment minister David
Anderson was touring the country promoting the need to sign the Kyoto
Accord, which was reached more than four years ago in Japan as an
undertaking by industrialized countries to curb global warming by
cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
Anderson has conceded there will be costs to implementing the accord,
perhaps in the billions of dollars, but also benefits and much worse
costs if nothing is done. One beneficiary is agriculture, which could
be compensated for the benefits of its land storing atmospheric carbon,
he said.
Alberta premier Ralph Klein has denounced the federal proposal to
approve the Kyoto Accord as a costly mistake that would penalize
Alberta’s gas and oil sector.
Prairie opponents often refer to Kyoto as a 21st century version of the
1980 National Energy Program that threw the Canadian oil industry into
a recession.
Mills said the Alliance’s first job is to convince Canadians that
Liberal promises about Kyoto’s beneficial effects are wrong.
They would require Canada to cut carbon dioxide emissions to a level
six percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Currently, Canada’s emissions are 17 percent above 1990 levels.
He said the deal covers most major industrialized countries, but
excludes such major polluters as China, India and Brazil.
As well, the United States has said it will not ratify the deal.
“It would cost us, not solve the international problem and hurt our
ability to compete with the Americans,” Mills said.
“It is a bad deal and it is my job to convince Canadians and to
position our party as the one with the real environmental answer.”
