Environment Minister Rona Ambrose recently indicated that the federal government is seriously considering participating in the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate -- the six-nation pact involving the United States, Japan, China, India, South Korean and Australia. The agreement calls for voluntary Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction targets and emphasizes initiatives to develop technologies that reduce emissions. (Four of the six countries have also ratified the infamous Kyoto Protocol.)

The Asia Pacific Pact calls for collaboration on clean coal, liquefied natural gas, methane, civilian nuclear power, geothermal power, rural energy systems, solar power, wind power and bio-energy. In the long-term, collaboration could involve hydrogen nanotechnologies, next-generation nuclear fission and fusion energy. The U.S. has already forged technology partnerships with China for accelerated work on clean coal technologies, and discussions are underway with India to share US technology for nuclear waste management.

The Kyoto Protocol, involving more than 160 countries, commits Canada to reduce its GHG emissions to six per cent below the levels they were at in 1990. But since ratifying the pact in 2002, our GHG emissions are up by 24 per cent. After the new federal government’s determination to kick Kyoto in the teeth in favour of a made-in-Canada solution, experts have argued that we are locked into Kyoto until February 16, 2009 – unless Canada begs all of the other participating countries to let us go. Then again, Canada could remain in the Kyoto agreement without meeting the targets until 2012, at which point the second phase of the pact begins. After that, countries will be penalized for not meeting the targets.

Kyoto skeptics say the Asia-Pacific pact is a more realistic one that wouldn’t punish the Canadian economy (and in particular the lucrative oil sands industry) in the same ways that Kyoto would. Canada’s “greenest prime minister” Brian Mulroney has also says new PM Stephen Harper to think outside of the Kyoto box. Last week, while he was in Ottawa to pick up an award for his environmental record, he strongly advised that Canadians work with their continental trading partners on global warming. Of course, as everyone knows, the U.S. has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) has already been instrumental in developing new international GHG standards for the world. On behalf of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Standards Council of Canada, CSA managed a Working Group comprising 200 international experts from more than 50 countries and non-governmental organizations to develop the new ISO 14064 series of standards. The standards will enable governments, businesses, investors and others to use internationally agreed best practices to measure, report and verify GHG emissions from organizations or specific GHG reduction projects. It is expected that CSA will offer Canadian editions of the standards in mid-2006. (For more on this, read the “Legal Perspective” column in the June/July edition of HazMat Management magazine.)

At the end of this long day of debate on climate change and how to conquer it, the main goals are alike: to better regulate GHG emissions and to encourage business to get competitive and commercialize more sustainable technologies and energy solutions.

Perhaps a made-in-North-America approach bolstered by solid new standards and accompanied the Asia-Pacific Partnership and Kyoto (or not) is our best bet after all. While I have supported Kyoto policy in the past I can’t help but think that a Kyoto by any other name would smell just as sweet.