Unfortunately, whatever meager political influence I have, doesn't extend beyond Canada. I do think, however, if Canada and the US and the West made real concerted moves towards environmental reform, international protocols and pressures would more likely be realized.

International protocols can't stop Russia from waging a war of territorial aggression. You think they can convince China and India to artificially limit economic growth? When huge segments of the population live in crushing poverty that carbon fueled development would reduce? Keep dreaming. If man-made climate change is real it cannot be stopped.

Climate change is real and it can be stopped. A key part of that is getting rid of some of the free trade agreements we have in place, which encourage shipping goods at a very high cost to the environment from places like China and India.

Do you realize how radical of a proposal that is?

And again, India and China would oppose it. Their peoples' lives have been improving as their countries' carbon emissions have increased, since industrialization has lead to their economies growing. China, India, and other developing countries will not hold themselves back and let their people have worse lives than they otherwise would.

Maybe that's shortsighted if the catastrophic man-made climate change thesis is true. But until those effects start happening there's no prayer of the sort of trans-formative reform supposedly needed to get passed. And thus we are doomed, if the alarmist view is correct. Stopping Keystone and building acres of wind farms will do nothing as long as the satanic mills in poor countries keep belching out carbon.

And yet the main reason why there are so many coal-fired plants in China and India is because of exports to developed countries, because of the consumerist culture we currently have in the western world.

You're not proposing a solution. You're just spouting worn anti-free trade brocards.

Stopping free trade is definitely part of the solution. Under the WTO, governments aren't allowed to subsidize local production of renewable energy sources like solar panels, because it stops the rest of the world from being able to compete with the prices.

Where do you get such ideas? Renewable energy sources are awash is government subsidies. It's the reason many even exist.

Hi, economist here again. What arborinius is suggesting is economic suicide. Loss of FTA's would shrink the global economy by several trillion dollars.

Also, he is wrong. The Unites States does not have an FTA with any of those heavy exporting countries. We have I believe 23 FTA's currently. Only one in Asia is with south Korea, signed two years ago

Sorry, subsidize was the wrong word. The specific case I was thinking of was when the government of Ontario put in place the Green Energy and Green Econmy act, which had a fee-in tariff program, allowing renewable energy providers to sell power back into the grid, but that in order for most energy providers to qualify, a certain minimum percentage of workforce and materials had to be local to Ontario. For instance, solar energy developers had to source at least 40% of their content from inside Ontario.

This legislation was an effort to revive Ontario's manufacturing sector, and to provide jobs (31,000 were created by 2014). Japan and the European Union considered this to be a violation of WTO rules, claiming that it would "discriminate against equipment or renewable generation facilities produced outside Ontario".

"Also, he is wrong. The Unites States does not have an FTA with any of those heavy exporting countries."
I never said the US does.

You're conflating free trade with international trade generally.

If your answer to global warming is to drag us back into the days of mercantilism we really are doomed.

Why's that?