Little Qatar, our role model on climate change

This just in from the Durban climate change talks. The world's leading per-capita carbon dioxide emitter will play host to the biggest event on the world's climate change agenda next year.

Yes, teacup-sized Qatar, the filthy-rich jewel of the Persian Gulf, will be the site of the United Nations 2012 climate change conference from November 26 to December 7, 2012.

According to New Scientist, Qatar has the world's highest per-capita carbon dioxide emissions (thanks mainly to a booming offshore natural gas industry). At more than 50 tonnes a head, its emissions are seven times those of Britain and more than triple those of the United States. It also has one of the highest per-capita rates of water use, averaging 400 litres a person per day.

And it is doing little to improve that woeful record. On the contrary, it provides its citizens -- the earth's wealthiest people on a per-capita basis -- with unlimited free electricity and water, which it creates through energy-intensive desalination of seawater.

No wonder its emissions are five times greater than they were in 1990, the start date for Kyoto targets.


Fortunately for Qatar, it is exempt from the Kyoto protocols targets.  Like its super-rich Gulf neighbours, it was placed on the "developing nation" list when the targets were set in 1997, and no one has bothered to update the list since.

If only Canada could get itself on the list, our climate change public relations problems would be over.

We could make all the oil sands money we wanted, and no one would say boo. Every house lit up like a Christmas tree. Lawns groaning in wet, green pleasure. Golf courses and refineries on every block.  

Oh, let those energy-sucking, carbon-dioxide-emitting good times roll! And give that ridiculous fossil award to someone else for a change.

Now that's a climate change policy I could get behind.

This cannot stand

The Guardian is reporting that the draft Irish budget is making the rounds of German legislators before the Irish people themselves get a chance to look at it. Needless to say, the Irish were shocked by the revelation.

"Loss of sovereignty may be an abstract notion," the Guardian article says, "but this week Irish people were confronted with what it means in reality. Revelations that draft proposals for the Irish December budget had been circulated in a German parliamentary committee were met with horror in Ireland. It has since emerged that they were sent to every finance minister in the EU."

There are explanations and apologies for the leak, of course. But the fact remains that German state legislators are vetting the Irish budget, as they will vet the Greek budget, and the Portuguese budget and, perhaps, the Italian budget. Next will come the Spanish budget and, perhaps, horror of horrors, the French budget.

When one thinks, for even a moment, of the blood and tears expended by the Irish people to shuck off the yoke of British rule in the last century, one can only feel infinite sadness at how easily they have traded away their sovereignty in this century. Whatever their financial misdeeds -- and those are still a matter of debate -- the Irish do not deserve this.

And yet it is also apparent that it cannot and will not happen. The Irish people will not allow it. Nor will the Greeks, the Portuguese, the Italians, the Spanish and, above all, the French.

There may be a way out of this. The Germans may be gifted by a sudden flash of insight; the technocrats may receive an infusion of human feeling; the bond vigilantes may take up butterfly collecting; the world may come to its senses.

Barring those unlikely interventions, however, it is clear that the dream of a peacefully, united Europe has been shattered.



"I think it will be damaging in the sense that it plays to a narrative that Germany is calling shots all over Europe," Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin told Reuters. "It will damage sentient towards Europe and that is a problem."

Do tell.

Toronto Life laughs at Timmins - Now that's funny!

Can’t resist posting this item from Toronto Life’s “The Informer” column:

Porter Airlines to service Timmins, Ontario (and all of its 200 residents)

Beloved airline and free alcohol dispensary Porter Airlines celebrated its fifth birthday this month by expanding service to Timmins. The local airport provides access to the hamlet’s many attractions and serves as an important gateway to the rest of Northern Ontario. The three daily flights begin January 16, 2012, a month after Burlington, Vermont, is also added to the roster. This latest destination is one more tiny reason to choose Porter, especially with Air Canada hell-bent on a strike. New flights and beer versus pissed-off flight attendants—you decide.

If you were a highly educated denizen of Tiny Condo Inner City, you might find this very, very funny.  Ever so witty and urbane. Comes with its own powdered wig.

Beloved Toronto – Always expanding the meaning of the term effete snob.