"Christmas present" from Canada

Sorry, my friends from Canada, for my first story in English is about your country and it's a sad story. I don't have any negative feelings against you personally, just only feel sad about your government’s decision of withdrawing out of the Kyoto Protocol yesterday, even though the move was expected.

Reason is given: your each citizen could not afford 1,600 dollars for fulfillment those commitments in the Protocol. You have had, however, a long time to prepare for this money (from 1990 to 2012) but you failed, and became a “free-rider” in the game where real impacts exist.

Ten days ago, I attended a symposium of a famous professor in environment field from University of Alberta. He talked proudly about his life time project of saving woodland caribou in some oilsands areas of Canada. In order to save about 2000 caribou from extinction, your government is willing to pay about 500 millions dollars from your tax money in 50 years. And this number (5,000 per caribou per year) may be increased in future since you need more time to increase caribou herds to a sustainable level. I was wondered and I asked myself what have you thought about these two numbers: 5,000 and 1,600. People of 67 countries may be sure to live under the 5,000 level (in term of GDP per capita - IMF source), and you were hesitated because of the 1,600 level (about 6% of your GDP per capita in 2010) to pay for future generations of the whole world?

Which one is heavier on your scale? Should I understand that you are making an effort to save a tradition of Christmas where Santa Claus must ride on those caribou in order to bring your children happiness once a year? Or you did not simply realize that there is much more cost for “future children” in many coming Christmas seasons if the land of Santa Claus is lost forever because of melting poles?

If leaving the COP17 is one of your gifts for the world in the coming Christmas, it is really a “bad romance”!

Oslo dated 14 December 2011