Sandwalk: Why Kyoto Is Important

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Why Kyoto Is Important

The Kyoto Protocols set out goals for industrialized nations to lower carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants. On average, greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by about 5% relative to 1990 levels. The Kyoto Protocols came into effect in February 2005. 141 industrialized nations signed on, the only significant countries that didn't ratify the treaty were Australia and the United States.

We all share this planet and it is every one's responsibility to behave in a manner that will make our children proud. The real meaning of Kyoto is not in the goals or whether they will be met. The significance is in the effort and the agreement to cooperate for the common good. Kyoto is a big step forward in international relations and that's why we need to support the effort. Turning your back on Kyoto is like slapping your friend in the face after you have shaken hands on a deal.

Canada has just done that when Stephen Harper announced that we would not try to meet our objective. Will things be any different if the new leader of the Liberal party becomes Prime Minister?

You bet they will!

Stéphane Dion is serious about environmental issues and he will reinstate Canada's commitment to the Kyoto Protocols when he becomes Prime Minister next Spring. This will help restore our credibility in the world.

I'm hoping he will be able to convince the Americans that they should join with other nations in making an effort to improve the planet.

Thanks to James Bowie for getting the photo of Stéphane Dion and his dog "Kyoto."

3 comments :

Alex said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; Thursday, December 07, 2006 10:48:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Stéphane Dion did campaign within the Liberal Party with strong environmental outlooks. It should be interesting to see how that works out. But that said, I would like to point out that the Liberals didn't actually get anywhere under Kyoto; in comparison, the Europeans have gone miles ahead in addressing climate change (e.g. pouring loads of money into alternative energy). Under the Liberals, any adherence to Kyoto was a facade-- the Conservatives are more pragmatic about it, and pointed out that Canada isn't going to meet Kyoto targets. However, the Conservatives really aren't addressing climate change seriously either, so it's status quo. Hmm.; Thursday, December 07, 2006 10:49:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Off-topic: You may enjoy David Baltimore's review of The God Delusion at American Scientist.; Thursday, December 07, 2006 11:22:00 PM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Thursday, December 07, 2006

Why Kyoto Is Important

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