Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Calgary Southeast.
During negotiations at the Kyoto protocol, Canada fought to have carbon sinks included in the wording. Apparently it wanted the 6% credit it can claim for sinks to offset the 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions our country has to implement by 2010. Once again the Liberal government has jumped on the easy way out with little thought as to how this would affect the people in the fields and the forests of this country. Is this yet another example of exploiting the rural areas to compensate for urban sprawl, for the pollution spewing transportation and industrial equipment of large urban areas? Perhaps.
What is a carbon sink? It is not some place in the kitchen where one's better half does the dishes. A carbon sink is a method of using plants, soil and trees to sequester, store and absorb carbon. Many environmentalists and scientists are saying it is the biggest loophole to be found in the Kyoto protocol. Why? It avoids the main issue the protocol was designed to address: reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons.
The Liberal government concluded quite cavalierly that carbon sinks are found in existing forest and prairie lands anyway and are encouraged by agricultural practices such as low tillage. Apparently, the thinking of the Canadian negotiators was that if they are there already let us take credit for them.
Yes, they are there already and they may not be a problem when they occur as a natural course of events, but what costs will there be if creating carbon sinks becomes the prime focus on our lands and forests? How much is too much when it comes to storing carbon in large amounts? Do we know? Does the government side of the House care?
When Bill Hare, climate policy director of Greenpeace International, talked of the inclusion of sinks in the protocol, he said:
If the rules of the Kyoto Protocol were to allow this kind of loophole, its environmental integrity would go out the window.
I agree.
Are we not just a little embarrassed that Canada was the country pushing for the inclusion of this so-called loophole? We did not have the nerve, as our cousins to the south did, of dropping off the protocol altogether. Instead we asked for an out without fully researching what that out might do to the future use of our lands.
Some scientists have indicated that the maintaining of carbon sink forests for long periods will be difficult. David O. Hall says that although trees and other forms of biomass can act as carbon sinks at maturity, they must eventually be used as a source of fuel or timber product as the carbon will be lost through decay or naturally occurring forest fires.
Where will the drive to create these carbon sinks stop? Will the government encourage clear cutting of old growth forests so that it may claim extra carbon credits from the resulting reforestation? With everything else that has been thrown at our forest industry, what is one more environmental component to deal with? Is that the thinking?
With regard to our farmers, what reward will they get for participating in the storage of carbons on their lands? Many farmers out there, as the agriculture committee heard in its travels across the country, are dealing with an increase in pressure from a variety of sources. Whether it is encroaching urban development, difficulty with crown land issues or adhering to the strict fisheries and oceans codes regarding streams, it is all time taken away from the production of the food necessary to feed this country. When they try to help the environment by such methods as organic farming and integrated production, both of which are good for the environment, society and the economy, are they rewarded? No. We slap more regulations on their operations.
The whole concept of sinks was hotly debated at the Kyoto negotiations. In 1999 the topic closed down talks being held in the Hague. The idea was objected to by those countries that believe we need to do something to eliminate the greenhouse gases that are being created by all of us. Canada chose to support the sinks, thereby creating a way to bypass the intent of the protocol. Earlier this month, the Prime Minister even associated the ratification of Kyoto with the importance of clean air. This is a ridiculous argument.
Kyoto is designed primarily to control CO
2
emissions. Unlike nitric oxides, sulphur dioxide and soot, CO
2
is not a pollutant. Indeed, it is the very elixir of life. It is the primary nutrient of plants, and without its warming effect earth would be stuck in a perpetual ice age. A far better way to control real pollution would be to expand upon targeted and far less expensive pollution control programs, or in other words, use some common sense.
No one seems sure what stockpiling of carbon dioxide in plants and soil eventually will do to our ecosystems. Carbon dioxide is a natural byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, volcanoes and rotting vegetation as well as breathing. Carbon dioxide pollution has been on the rise since humans moved away from the rural lifestyle and embraced the industrial age.
Now we are asking those in rural communities to fix the mess urban sprawl has created. Considering how we treat our farmers when they ask for assistance or how we treat our forest workers when they are attacked by foreign lobby groups, do we now have the nerve to ask them to rescue us?
In addition to asking the hewers of wood and the tillers of the land to carry the burden of stored carbons, there is also the concept of storing carbons under the sea, an idea that could have a great impact on our fish farmers. Science News magazine says that many of the proposed biological storage schemes may have short term benefits at best and some may actually spawn huge problems of their own.
If we decide to use the oceans as a large carbon reservoir, what happens to the micro-organisms called phytoplankton? These tiny creatures live near the surface of the ocean and form a broad base of the ocean's food supply. They also serve as a biological pump. They take in carbon dioxide as they grow. Those that do not get eaten carry the carbon they have absorbed to the bottom of the ocean when they die. There, if undisturbed, they form a layer that eventually turns into limestone sediment. Has anyone researched what the addition of 10%, 25% or 50% more carbon will do to this delicate balance?
As my colleagues have indicated, the Kyoto protocol is not the answer to our environmental woes. We need to address the gas emissions, not avoid them by sweeping the offending gases under the rug.