Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement between certain countries to reduce their carbon emissions by a certain percent below their 1990 carbon emission levels before a certain time. To ensure that the countries will stick to their goal, the Protocol makes use of a credit system. The carbon credit system. Every year that a country is above the acceptable levels of carbon emissions, they must pay a fine to offset their excess emissions. To increase the acceptable level of carbon emissions within that country, they must use some of their own money to pay for a program to offset the carbon emissions within their country or within a certain other country. Should they stay below their set limit of carbon emissions, that country would have the right to sell their excess credits to another country that went over the acceptable limit of carbon emissions. The idea behind this is to promote and create the desire to reduce the emissions of carbon credits and to reward those who succeed in doing so.

For the Kyoto Protocol to be approved, they needed to meet to main criteria.

The first was that they needed at least fifty countries to sign in approval of the protocol.

However the Second main criteria was that, of the countries who signed in approval, they needed to total a minimum of 50% of the world's carbon emissions. With Canada now leaving the protocol, the influence that the Kyoto Protocol once had is now greatly diminished due to the fact that three of the largest contributors to the world's carbon emissions have decided not to participate in this movement. Canada not only failed to meet the desired expectations of the protocol for the longest time, but has also increased their total emissions, much less set an example as one of the largest contributors to the world's total greenhouse gas emissions, this proving to be a costly mistake with over 14 billion dollars to pay in fine for exceeding the limit set my the protocol. As a result Canada has decided to no longer take part in the movement as all of this money could prove to be of use to them and has only decided to re-join the protocol once they will be in better condition to do so.

I personally agree with Canada's decision in backing out of the protocol because it would be, financially speaking, unwise for them to continue to take part in the Kyoto Protocol if they are not yet ready to do so. Why should they be throwing away billions of dollars every year simply because they are not making an effort to help out in the protocol that they agreed to take part in? They'd might as well just accept the fact that they are not yet ready to face such a challenge, cut their losses and back out while they still have money in their name. Canada presently has more important things to deal with and, one day, when they will be ready to take on such a challenge, then, and only then, will they manage to  make progress and achieve something great. However, that day has not yet come and, although the Kyoto Protocol is infact a good idea, perhaps this is simply the way things should be for now. Maybe it would prove to be more beneficial for Canada to simply follow their own agenda and, in time, progress far beyond what they expected to accomplish. I never saw Canada as a country that would follow the lead of someone else. I always saw this country as one who would lead others; not being led be others. Perhaps this may be the chance that we're looking for. This may be our chance to actually set an example in our own way when the time will finally come.