Northwest Passage Redux

"...which is of course created in significant part by continuing emissions from the US if the science is correct..."

Hey, no free pass for Canada on this. Our per-capita is just as high, and Ontario's per-capita exceeds many of the U.S. states. Same goes for other forms of pollution, in which Ontario (in recent times) ranked 3rd-worst per capita amongst states and provinces in North America.

But shhh... as long as our neighbour to the south manages to insist on the spotlight, we can maybe try to address our part of it before anyone notices ...

pathetic. need we say more about the short-sightedness of our politicians? we might as well just give away all the land north of 50, we've got no plans for it. we didn't really do anything to get all our land; we inherited it from HBC/GBR & i think we won't know what we've got until it's gone.

i guess deciding that sovereignty in the north is a higher priority than star wars is a good start, but since we don't even have a shipbuilding industry we've got a long way to go.

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"George Bush has declared the war on terrorism to be the cause of his generation. The cause of Canadian sovereignty will be ours." - John Godfrey, MP for Don Va

Russia, Japan, the UK and the U.S. see the NWP as governed under treaties
dealing with international waters. Canada and Denmark/Greenland see the
waters as sovereign territory, because the waterway is not passable year-
round. Canada and Denmark disagree on how nautical boundaries are drawn,
and because of a lack of attention paid to the issue until climate change
created the opportunity, we're both right under various interpretations of
international law (there are precedents supporting both). That little island is
part of the survey-methods dispute.

Denmark could be our ally in any sovereignty claim, since it supports the
same principles. Look for the "international waters" crowd to try to divide
and conquer any Canada/Denmark alliance by hyping the Hans Island thing,
which barely registers on Denmark's radar. If a schoolyard tiff between two
middle powers over survey techniques becomes the big media issue, the even
bigger issue, sovereign vs. international, will become a "fact on the ground"
for international, as the other powers decide how to come to our "rescue".

The Northwest passage belongs to Canada. All one has to do is look at a map.

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Dave Ruston

"Which is a little, uh, quaint, because first, they still call the Inuit people "Eskimos" in the U.S.?"

Yes, how quaint and politically incorrect those Americans are! Don't they know the proper term is "Inuit". Tell those yankee bigots that such outmoded, vulgar, slang is only appropriate when referring to the football team from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Yanks trolling thru looking for stuff to dump some indignation on, please note that was tounge-in-cheek.

The important difference being that Canada has a tenth the population, so even matching pollution tonne for tonne per capita, the US is polluting 10 times as much. That said, we *do* need to reduce emissions across the board, and things like the one-tonne challenge are attempting to do exactly that.

I haven't heard much about kyoto lately; anyone have any news?

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Every time you complain about the moderators, god kills a kitten.

as opposed to calling a team the Red Skins, eh?

(also tongue in cheek)

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Every time you complain about the moderators, god kills a kitten.

The U.S. is the largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. That is simple fact. <P> That's why the Kyoto Protocol couldn't come into effect without a huge number of countries signing on, including Russia (Russia accounts for 17% of all greenhouse gas emissions), once the US pulled out--because as <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3143798.stm">the BBC explains</a>, "For the agreement to become a legally binding treaty, it must be ratified by countries which together were responsible for a at least 55% of the total 1990 emissions reported by the industrialised countries and emerging economies which made commitments to reduce their emissions under the protocol. As the US accounted for 36.1% of those emissions, this 55% target is much harder to achieve without its participation." <P> So Canada certainly accounts for a part but not such a hugely significant part as the US. While the US ranks number 1 for CO2 emissions for example, Canada ranks somewhere around 8th last I checked (after the US, China, Russia, Japan, India, Germany, and the UK and/or the EU). <P> But I didn't say Canada should get a free pass. We may not be top emitter but we're not nearly as good as say, Denmark and Sweden, which are ranked 49th and 50th--and that's one international ranking I'd love to see Canada plummet down. I have stated that repeatedly in public as a federal NDP candidate in 2004 and now again. The Liberal record is not good and I sincerely believe we need to elect more NDP MPs to keep the government accountable and move towards reducing pollution and switching to green alternatives like wind power (the NDP was rated very highly for its environmental platform in 2004 by several environmental groups). <p>---<br>Now call it extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard, and we hit it fast, with a major, and I mean major, leaflet campaign.--Rimmer, Red Dwarf<br />

Fair enough; I'm not a football fan, clearly. Still I think the point can be made that it's one thing to use the name of a football team to refer to a football team, and another to refer to the actual First Nation by a name they view as derogatory. But hey, if the US wants to refer to the Inuit people as Eskimos, they can feel free--at least we know the US won't be winning any friends up there for help with the sovereignty dispute. (It's either that or the Washington papers just like to talk down to their readers a lot, and just assume their readers won't know what "Inuit" means.)

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Now call it extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard, and we hit it fast, with a major, and I mean major, leaflet campaign.--Rimmer, Red Dwarf

By happy accident just came across two articles on global warming that relate well to some of the comments on my post. <P> First check out <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0613-02.htm">Global Warming:</a> The U.S. Contribution in Figures. You'll learn such handy facts as "Despite having just 2 per cent of known oil reserves, the US consumes 25 per cent of the world's oil production" and "It is responsible for a quarter of all carbon dioxide emissions - an average of 40,000 pounds of carbon dioxide is released by each US citizen every year - the highest of any country in the world, and more than China, India and Japan combined". <P> Then there's <a href="http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/22166/">It's Not Just Eskimos in Bikinis</a> (with a wink to my tongue-in-cheek friend). It pretty much makes the point I was making re the above article. "As long as we're talking about ice in distant climes, global warming seems like something that's happening elsewhere and to somebody else -- or some other set of creatures." <p>---<br>Now call it extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard, and we hit it fast, with a major, and I mean major, leaflet campaign.--Rimmer, Red Dwarf<br />

The Passage belongs to those who have a Navy or Coast Guard to patrol it. So that leaves Canada out of the picture. The vast majority of Canadians want to live as close to the United States as possible, they don't care about ice up in the North. Canadians voted to give up being a real country with real hard interests in the world, why get worked up about this now?

Just Eskimos in Bikinis: <a href="http://www.esks.com/default.asp?V_DOC_ID=1390">http://www.esks.com/default.asp?V_DOC_ID=1390</a><br />
<br />
Maybe, just maybe, some attention paid to the north--pictures, etc., will start <br />
to make some sense. The irony might stick: a summertime passage opening <br />
in the north due to climate change, so that fat-ass ships full of oil or the <br />
products of its convenience, too big to fit through the Panama Canal, can <br />
mitigate rising fuel costs by not having to navigate all the way around South <br />
America. Then again, the rightwing economists can just point at our good <br />
fortune and say "see, whaddaya worried about?"<br />

You're talking without proof again; *when* exactly did Canadians vote to give up being a real country? I don't recall ever seeing a ballot on that subject, and if I had, I would certainly vote against losing countryship. _Some_ canadians still care, even if you don't.

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Every time you complain about the moderators, god kills a kitten.

"The Passage belongs to those who have a Navy or Coast Guard to patrol it.
So that leaves Canada out of the picture."

So that's where the world is now? Sovereignty and propriety is to be procured
by force? The rest of the international community should turn its back and
say "property rights granted only to those who are capable of defending
them?" It is up to the other "middle powers" of the world to stand up to such
an attitude--I'm sure there is enough grey area and precedent in
international law to allow the more powerful nations to justify taking de facto
control of whatever they want.

NATO was formed as an alliance that agreed to treat any attack on the
sovereignty of its members as an attack on all members, was it not? What
happens if the "attack" is by one member on another?