KYOTO SHELL GAME.

This article discusses the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and how since its ratification in Canada few changes have been made to battle global warming. The day after Canada officially ratified the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in December 2002, David Anderson was in New York City to deposit the freshly signed paper with the Treaty Section of the United Nations. It was his shining moment as federal environment minister: an avowed multilateralist and an unabashed tree hugger, Anderson had spent three years battling opponents -- and sometimes cabinet colleagues -- over a deal he firmly held to be a turning point in the war against global warming. Whatever it was about the Kyoto accord that stirred such emotions two years ago seems like a distant memory, to the point where neither proponents nor critics of the deal give it much chance of making a difference in Canada. Since the conception of the protocol in 1990, greenhouse gas emissions in Canada have climbed some 20 per cent (as of 2002), and all signs suggest those numbers have increased since Anderson's giddy time in New York two years ago. But most critics agree on the basic errors that have led us to our current dilemma, where reaching our stated goal of cutting emissions six per cent below 1990 levels by 2010 -- a reduction of at least 240 megatonnes per year -- would require a brand of resolve we simply don't have. Our most grave, and perhaps most foreseeable, mistake was fooling ourselves into thinking we could do our part under Kyoto without inflicting pain on so-called large final emitters.