Sixteen years ago, on this day, December 12, 2007, Canada leaves Kyoto Protocol as Australia formally joins
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2023 it is 421ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that a COP was taking place in Bali Indonesia that was all about what would happen after the Kyoto Protocol period was over 2008 to 2012.
The Canadians under Stephen Harper were clearly not going to hit their targets and Harper, a conservative, was throwing red meat to his side in removing Canada.
The Australian story was the opposite: Kevin Rudd had used Kyoto and lack of ratification as a way of painting then Prime Minister John Howard as a dinosaur ahead of the November 2007 federal election. One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to announce that Australia would ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
What I think we can learn from this
Day-to-day-to-year politics mean that no agreement is particularly safe.
There is also a lot of symbolism going on – see the “veil of Kyoto” article.
What happened next
Rudd, at Bali, refused to go along with European requests for Australia to have a higher emissions reduction target than its pitiful current level – a sign of problems to come.
The emissions kept climbing.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..