global warming
...densely populated countries. Canada produces 70per cent as much carbon dioxide as Germany,106per cent of the UK, 64per cent as much as India and 35 per cent as much as China. Canada contributes more than its share to global warming. Fortunately, there are natural processes that tend to reduce the atmospheric build-up of CO2. Trees absorb CO2 . Mature trees can lock up several tonnes of carbon keeping it out of the atmosphere. Seawater is also known to dissolve huge amounts of CO2. The creatures in a healthy ocean can also lock up carbon as they remove CO2 from seawater to incorporate carbon into their skeletons. Although we understand many of the processes affecting our atmosphere, the complexity of the natural world makes it nearly impossible to predict what the sum of all these effects will have on global warming. Agriculture does not require temperatures of 500 degrees to make food production impossible. The question that science would like to answer is whether increased CO2 production would stimulate processes that remove more CO2 from the atmosphere, or, whether the opposite could happen. If increased temperatures slow the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, global warming could go out of control. Since seawater absorbs less CO2 as temperatures increase, the potential for accelerated global warming may exist. Similarly, slight temperature changes, that favour the fitness of one species over another, could reveal other unfortunate consequences. For example, the destruction of huge tracts of BC forest by the mountain pine beetle makes these forests unable to absorb carbon. Prolonged periods of cold weather are required to kill this pest but this has not been happening. Effects like this one are unpredictable, and, they will increase the effects of global warming. When initiatives, like the Kyoto Protocol, are seen to threaten the interests of big business some politicians, like premiers Klein and Campbell, jump to take up the banners of job loss and cost . Yet, there is more evidence to suggest that implementing Kyoto would create more jobs than the “business-as-usual” reliance on fossil fuels. Long before Kyoto, The Council on Economic Priorities of New York City published a study entitled Jobs and Energy. This study examined the effects of using passive solar techniques and well-known conservation strategies on industry, homes and municipal infrastructure in some of the boroughs of NYC. The study concluded that, locally, four times as many jobs would be created by upgrading systems to save e...