Thursday, May 24, 2012

A Note On Carbon Emissions

From one of Mike De Souza's fine pieces on Canada's GG emissions policy, noting a statement made by Environment Minister Peter Kent in the HOC earlier this month:

"This reduction is due to technological innovation and equipment turnover, increased reliability across operations and the avoidance of upgrading emissions by exporting more crude bitumen," said Kent's statement.


Since "refining" the crude product requires the application of chemicals, heat, and etc., this too becomes  a source of GG emissions.  So one way of meeting your emissions target is to ship the stuff away raw and let others incur the environmental cost of processing  it.   A cynical strategy, sure, but I can't summon this guy's outrage , if only because the  green plans of most western nations have the off-shoring of a certain tonnage of emissions to the developing world as a strategic component.  


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