John Kerry makes Canadian climate efforts hopeless

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Jan 21

At a news conference on January 27, John Kerry, the Biden Administration’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, observed that ninety percent of the world’s CO2 emissions occurred outside United States borders.  He then said that if the United States emissions “went to zero tomorrow”, the problem of the existential threat wouldn’t be solved 

This same argument applies with ten times the force to Canada.  Ninety-eight and a half percent of the world’s CO2 emissions occur outside Canadian borders, and if Canadian emissions went to zero tomorrow, the problem – the existential threat – wouldn’t be solved, or even touched.

Kerry’s remarks came as a shock.  Kerry was trying to justify the Biden Administration rejoining the Paris Accord and starting other initiatives to reduce world CO2 emissions.  But what people heard was that the United States wasn’t the Great Satan of climate catastrophe that they had been told, and they heard it from the lips of one who had intimated that it was.  This candid observation threw into doubt in the minds of many the practicality of self-flagellation over climate.  Unless China and India get on board, painful actions to reduce emissions in America will be fruitless.

The same applies to Canada even more.  Mr. Trudeau’s policies on climate will be utterly futile to the larger problem even if they works perfectly at home.  They will amount to demonstrations of moral vanity to our detriment rather that effective solutions.

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