RoguePundit

Cleaner Big Rigs

On December 11-12, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) will vote on a proposed reg (here) to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from big rigs.  Obviously, the major way to do this is to cut the amount of diesel fuel they use.  More importantly from a health perspective, the proposed reg also focuses upon reducing particulate emissions.  From this link... 

State officials on Friday released a toughest-in-the-nation plan to cut emissions of air pollutants from the roughly 1 million heavy-duty diesel trucks that travel California's roads.

The rules proposed by the state Air Resources Board would require older big rigs to be fitted with particle-trapping exhaust filters by 2014 and low-emission engines by 2020. In addition, aerodynamic fairings and low-rolling-resistance tires would be required on long-haul trucks to improve fuel efficiency. 

The changes would help California meet air-quality standards set by federal regulators, as well as the state's own greenhouse-gas targets.

Bear in mind that this reg would apply to all big rigs operated in California, no matter where they're licensed.  And note that even with implementation of the reg, it's anticipated that overall GHG emissions from trucking in CA will continue to rise.

Emissions from diesel engines are carcinogenic and can worsen asthma and other respiratory and cardiovascular ailments. The agency estimates the regulations will cost trucking companies roughly $5.5 billion and will prevent 9,400 premature deaths.

Trucking groups generally object to the cost of the proposed retrofits, which would begin to take effect in 2011. The industry is currently reeling from high fuel prices and the weak economy.

Exhaust filters cost $10,000 or more, new engines several times that, and a new truck well over $100,000.

That premature death estimate isn't worth the paper it's written on.  It's there to remind folks that particulates--large and small--can have an adverse impact on one's health.

To some degree, companies that replace their trucks regularly will automatically meet the standards, because new truck engines are required under federal rules to have emissions controls.

...

About $1 billion in state grants and loans are available to defray those costs. Small trucking companies would get more time to comply with the regulations than large fleets.

Small trucking companies are defined as having up to eight tractors and twenty trailers.

By the way, CARB believes that over the long run, this reg will save most truckers money.  Quoting from Chapter 12...

The cost analysis was computed based upon an 11-year equipment lifespan, from 2010 to 2020. Over that time span, staff expects a net savings of approximately $4.3 billion to the affected stakeholders in 2008 dollar values. During the first six years of implementation from 2010 to 2015, an estimated net savings of $3.5 billion is expected.  The net savings will be realized by truck operators because of improved fuel economy.  Businesses that own only trailers and no tractors may not be able to recover the cost of retrofitting their trailers through fuel savings, and therefore, they may need to recover their investment by paying less to haulers or by passing it on to customers by increasing the cost of their merchandise. Ultimately, the substantial operating cost savings seen by the truck haulers should result in lower costs to ship goods and result in lower cost for consumers. Staff calculated the savings based upon the projected retail price per gallon of ultra low sulfur diesel fuel of $3.14 in 2010 to $3.69 in 2020. However, staff believes this may be a conservative estimate of the savings since recently the California average retail price for diesel fuel was about $4.00 per gallon. At $4.00 per gallon, the lifetime savings of the regulation (over the 11-year lifespan of the equipment) would be about $8.5 billion.

If truckers could bank on such savings, more of them would already be pursuing these initiatives.

Here Comes PERS Again

For years now, our PERS investors have taken on too much risk.  That's worked well the market was strong.  However when times have been tough--like after the tech bubble burst, the taxpayers are on the hook for those investment losses.  The state and local governments must pay higher PERS contributions, and that money comes at the expense of government services, more crowded classrooms, etc.   

Guess what may have happened again.

Oregon's public pension system has been the fully funded envy of other states since 2003 legislative reforms and a bull market helped turn a projected $17 billion system deficit into a substantial surplus.

No more.

As of Sept. 30, the value of the Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund--including a variable fund -- had fallen to $54 billion. That's down 19 percent from its October 2007 high of $66.8 billion, and 16 percent from the beginning of this year.

That doesn't count this October's market mayhem: an additional 18 percent decline so far in the Standard and Poor's 500 Index and even worse performance in international markets, where Oregon pensioners are big investors.

State pension funds are supposed to be stodgy.  Undermining that here in Oregon is the guaranteed eight percent return for the Tier 1 PERS employees and retirees.  The pension rules changed in 2003, but the Tier 1 expenses will remain high for a couple more decades until most of those workers are retired and start dying (previous blog here).

Complicating matters, pension fund managers have no way of immediately valuing their large investments in private equity and real estate partnerships. It's a good bet they've taken a hit, but unlike the average 401(k) plan, which sends out monthly statements to investors, financial reporting by the lightly regulated private partnerships lags by as much as two years. Moreover, the value of their underlying investments may not even be known until they're sold, which could take up to a decade.

Investment managers at the Oregon Treasury Department and the Public Employees Retirement System continue to put a confident buy-and-hold spin on the numbers. They're not bailing out or even rejiggering their investment strategy.

But they acknowledge that this market downturn has been far more painful for the portfolio than the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001.

... 

Ron Schmitz, the Treasury Department's chief investment officer, estimated that the fund's assets might be 90 percent to 95 percent of total liabilities, which are also calculated infrequently. That's still far better than most public pension funds around the country, but it's down substantially from the comforting surpluses of recent years.

Heavy sigh.  And of course the market might not be done going down.  After all, it's sure looking like we're headed into recession...it takes a second quarter of "negative growth" to make the recession official. 

The Oregon Investment Council, the five-member, governor-appointed body that manages the public pension money with the Treasury Department's investment division, has in recent years invested heavily in private equity and real estate partnerships to garner higher returns. Results have been superb, with private equity returning almost 23 percent annually and real estate 19 percent annually over the past five years.

But the credit crunch has sideswiped both markets.

...

The Oregon pension fund had $10.2 billion in private equity investments as of Sept. 30. Until the partnerships sell the companies they've invested in, it's anybody's guess what they're worth. But if their value tracks public markets, which are down 35 percent this year, Oregon's returns on private equity could take a big hit over time.

The pension fund's real estate investments may be even tougher to value, because they depend on a host of volatile variables, including interest rates and leasing and sales activity for myriad individual properties and markets. But it's clear that some of the investment pools will take big hits on the property they invested in, which could be magnified by the money they borrowed to goose their returns.

Schmitz said he wouldn't be surprised to see some significant asset write-offs in the real estate partnerships, perhaps 20 percent. But he said that was a rough guess.

And again, most other states envy the financial status of our PERS system.  Not good.

Pregnancy and Testicular Cancer

First, a definition...

Gestational hypertension (GH) is high blood pressure that develops after the twentieth week of pregnancy and returns to normal after delivery, in women with previously normal blood pressure.

In the things that make you go hmmm department...

Pettersson and colleagues observed 293 cases of germ-cell testicular cancer in the Swedish Cancer Register and 861 controls in the Swedish Medical Birth Register. They extracted data on maternal and pregnancy characteristics such as gestational hypertension, proteinuria, anemia and glucoseuria.

If women experienced severe gestational hypertension, their male offspring were 71 percent less likely to develop testicular cancer than those women who experienced no hypertension. If the gestational hypertension was mild, there was a 62 percent increased risk of testicular cancer.

Beyond decreased estrogen, severe gestational hypertension and preeclampsia increases the level of human Chorionic Gonadotropin, another pregnancy-related hormone, which may also have a protective effect against testicular cancer.

GH is more common in women who are obese or glucose intolerant--also called pre-diabetes.  

The Korean Desire for American Beef

South Korea was our third largest beef export market until mad cow disease was discovered here in December 2003.  Remember the demonstrations there a few months back after the South Korean government--in an attempt to sway our Congress to support a free trade agreement--removed the import restrictions on American beef (previous blog here)?   

Well, now that a few months have passed, how's our beef selling over there?  A couple of articles tell rather different tales.  First...

The biggest thing happening in the South Korean beef market is what's not happening: an avalanche of US beef pouring in.

Everybody in the business has under-estimated the effect on consumer sentiment of the candlelight demonstrations against imported US beef, held in Seoul and other cities in South Korea from early May through June, according to Meat and Livestock Australia's (MLA) Korea regional manager Glen Feist.

"We thought by this time we would see US beef everywhere, but it's not so," Mr Feist said.

The candlelight vigils, as well as a feature on the MBC TV chain's PD Diary program (South Korea's equivalent of 60 Minutes) which showed sick and injured cows being slaughtered at abattoirs in the US and reported on vCJD (the human variant of BSE which can be contracted through consumption of meat from cattle with mad cow disease) hurt sales of not only US meat but all beef, including South Korean.

When the South Koreans banned the import of American beef, it was Australia that stepped to fill much of the void.  The Australians frequently remind their Korean customers that their beef brings no risk of vCJD because they've never had a case of mad cow disease.  No doubt that Feist is fully aware of the following...

During the last four years, the U.S. beef industry has suffered greatly from lost trade with South Korea. In 2003, the United States exported 543.6 million pounds of beef and beef variety meats to South Korea, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. However, in 2007 the U.S. exported more than 10 times less this amount―-an estimated 53.4 million pounds valued at $117.3 million, although shipments were limited to boneless beef from cattle under 30 months of age and the market was only open for an intermittent five months during the year.

Some of that was because of our quality control problems...the Koreans rejected multiple shipments because they contained bone fragments.  Nonetheless, those numbers sure don't give the impression that the average South Korean consumer had been anxiously awaiting our beef.  Returning to the original article...

The latest official South Korean beef consumption figures won't be available until January but market observers insisted purchases had gone down.

"Pork consumption has increased a lot as an alternative to beef," Meat and Wool New Zealand's Korea representative Gun-Hee Yi said.

Only butcher shops now carry US beef. The US Meat Export Federation said 10,000 shops were selling American beef but Mr Feist disputed that figure.

"It's probably 20 or 30," he said.

Mr Yi estimated an even lower number. "I understand a total of 15 butchers are selling American beef at the moment," he said.

The article noted that American beef was simply being labeled as "imported."  That would certainly make it more difficult for outside observers to track where American beef was being sold. 

Notice the difference in tone of the following article.

U.S. beef exports to South Korea surged in September due to consumer demand for premium sirloin and rib cuts, Korean media reported, citing a report by the Agro-Fisheries Trade Corp.

The government-run corporation said U.S. beef imports totaled 7,030 tons, which was nearly 35 percent of the total amount of beef that Seoul imported in the one-month period. The value of U.S. imports during September was just shy of $44 million, accounting for 43 percent of the value of all imports as U.S. cuts fetched higher prices that those imported from Australia and New Zealand.

South Korea imported 20,253 tons of beef worth $103.1 million in September.

U.S. beef imports rose 126 percent in terms of value and 136 percent in terms of quantity compared with August (2,984 tons valued at $19.5 million.)

"There is a steady increase in demand for beef ribs that are sold at restaurants," an Agro-Fisheries Trade official was quoted as saying.

However, the demand still has a ways to go to get to where it was prior to our mad cow problems. Quoting Philip M. Seng, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Meat Export Federation back in April...

"Our industry has lost between $3.5 billion and $4 billion in beef exports to South Korea since the end of 2003," he said. "And we know that there is a significant demand there for quality U.S. beef that has not been satisfied for more than four years."

That's a lot more than $44 million per month.  But with Australia's drought problems and New Zealand's recent brush with endosulfan contamination (previous blog here)...

The Oregon Shakespeare and Britt Festivals

A couple of the Rogue Valley's major entertainment sources are having to reign in their spending a bit.

The economic downturn has forced the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to trim its 2009 budget in the face of a projected $1 million shortfall, officials said.

OSF Executive Director Paul Nicholson stated in a news release the company is facing one of its greatest financial challenges in its history.

Though the company said attendance was strong in 2008, OSF projects a $750,000 deficit as a result of lower investment returns and decreased ticket revenue.

The news does not get any better for 2009.

Donations are down and the falling stock market has decreased the payout from the endowment fund and other investments. These trends could lead to a shortfall of $1 million in 2009.

Nicholson and Artistic Director Bill Rauch agreed to cut the 2009 budget from $26.5 million to $25.5 million. Nicholson said the cuts will include scaling back productions, new play development, administration, reductions in executive management salaries and not filling open vacancies except in critical areas. No layoffs are expected at this time.

The OSF board knew that its 2008 budget goals were "very aggressive."  Those goals included increasing ticket revenue by over $800,000, contributed income by over $600,000, and endowment income by about $130,000.  At the end of 2007, the investment portfolio was worth $36.9 million and had earned a 13.7 percent return that year.  Total operating expenses in 2008 were expected to be about $26.7 million, up from $24.7 million in 2007 and $22.8 million in 2006.

Considering the health of the economy and the OSF's budgetary growth in recent years, a 3.8 percent cut doesn't seem particularly huge.

This news came nearly two weeks after the Britt Festivals hosted in Jacksonville announced a half a million dollar budget shortfall for 2008.

Switching links...

The shortfall amounts to about 11 percent of the nonprofit music festival's gross revenues for the year. Hood said about 60 percent of the deficit, or about $300,000, is from ticket sales the festival projected but failed to realize. The balance is due to shortfalls in memberships, cash sponsorships and interest income.

Hood attributed the financial crunch to higher artist fees (up 33 percent from 2007), industry changes as CD sales plummet, increased competition from newer regional venues, such as those in Bend and Redding, and the current economic downturn.

Making the numbers even scarier, the pinch comes in a year in which Britt had strong attendance. It sold 69,000 seats this year, an increase of about 17 percent over the 2007 season, but the growth in operating expenses outstripped income.

...

In a major disappointment, none of the shows at the roughly 6,000-seat Lithia — Brooks and Dunn, the Steve Miller Band and Willie Nelson — sold out. Britt sometimes arranges to present shows there that figure to be too big for the hillside in Jacksonville. Hood said he hoped the big-dollar shows (with top seats of almost $90) would make up for underperforming shows.

"My crystal ball's been a little foggy this year," he said. "They may have been too high-priced."

Duh.  The article noted that about 65 percent of income came from tickets and the rest from sponsorships, grants, etc.  Britt doesn't have nearly the resources of the OSF...cash and an endowment totaling $1.6 million. 

Random Nature #188

Not Much Farming:  The indigenous peoples of Australia were hunter-gatherers in large part because of what the land had to offer.  The following quote is from Chapter 15 of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" 

Agriculture was another nonstarter in Australia, which is not only the driest [inhabited] continent but also the one with the most infertile soils.  In addition, Australia is unique in that the overwhelming influence on climate over most of the continent is an irregular nonannual cycle, the ENSO (acronym for El Nino Southern Oscillation), rather than the regular annual cycle of the seasons so familiar in most other parts of the world.  Unpredictable severe droughts last for years, punctuated by equally unpredictable torrential rains and floods.  Even today, with Eurasian crops and with truck and railroads to transport produce, food production in Australia remains a risky business. 

Also, the northern third of the continent is within the tropical latitudes, and there isn't much high country to collect rain, provide cooler conditions, etc.  The following annual rainfall map shows that most of the precip falls on the edges of the continent.  Much of the remainder is desert or semi-arid (up to 500mm--almost 20 inches--of rain per year).

Yet, Australia is one of the world's major food exporters. 

Water When Dry:  The Murray Darling Basin is the breadbasket of Australia, accounting for 41 percent of the nation's agriculture.  The Murray and Darling Rivers originate in the Great Dividing Range and Australian Alps, both or which are near the coast.  Note that despite the dramatic names, the continent's tallest mountain is only 7,310 feet.  The rivers then flow into progressively drier country, eventually merging and making the short trip to the ocean near Adelaide.  

Unlike other major wheat producing areas of the world, the farmlands in the Murray Darling Basin lack a hard winter.  Instead, the climate is more like California's Central Valley...the winters are mild and damp, the summers are hot and dry, and a fair percentage of the agriculture is dependent upon irrigation. 

Selecting Data:  Climate change activists have been promoting the fact that as conditions warm, Australian weather is becoming drier.  The weather there has indeed gotten warmer across the continent over the last century (most weather data there goes back to 1900-1910).  But if one looks at the accompanying rainfall data, the majority of the continent has also gotten wetter. 

The following shows the rainfall across the Murray Darling Basin over the past century.  I would have shown the chart displaying the variance from the average, but it was biased by setting the base from 1961-1990, which was clearly a wetter period. 

FYI, 2008 (not on the chart) is running close to normal.  

The 1950s were unusually wet across much of Eastern Australia.  Maybe the drying trend since then is a return to normal.  But whatever the cause, cherry-picking 1950--or better yet 1970--sure makes the charts look more dramatic when trying to link climate change with drier conditions. 

Never mind the lack of a scientific basis for ignoring the earlier data.

Ending the Drought:  Remember that man's water usage can also cause and exacerbate droughts.  There's little question that the surface and groundwaters in the Murray Darling Basin have been both overallocated and overused.  This is a major factor in the inflows of some of the rivers and lakes being at record low levels, despite fairly decent rainfall the last two years.  The pan evaporation is a bit above average, but Australia has little data from before 1970 with which to make longer-term comparisons.  

Activists have been loudly blaming climate change--and even overpopulation--for the drought and many of the related problems.  The hyperbole has been amazing.  Meanwhile until recently, a number of people and communities have put off making major changes because they figured that a good year of two of rains would soon break the drought.  If nothing else, climate catastrophism and enduring drought are finally convincing folks that they can never rely upon the more generous water flows of the past and thus must cut their usage.  

As I've noted before, we can't just assume that the weather that we've lived with was normal.  Not unlike what happened in the Great Plains prior to our Dust Bowl, farmers flocked to the Murray Darling when conditions were benign and irrigation schemes were flourishing.  Many unknowingly became dependent upon above-average rainfall.  Heck, the water usage there had become unsustainable well before this drought.  

So if you can't stop the drought conditions...  

Government experts say the word "drought" is making farmers feel bad and want people to use the word "dryness" instead to describe Australia's worst "lack of rain" in a century.

Farmers also needed to accept that drier weather was here to stay, said a report by the Government's hand-picked Drought Policy Review Expert Social Panel.

"Words like drought ... have negative connotations for farm families," the report said.

It's been called the worst drought in a century and the worst in 1,000 years.  When it comes to "lack of rain," if folks would just read the historical data or ask somebody who'd lived through the "dryness" that ended just after WWII...

Profits in Strawberries

Organic strawberries in supermarkets can cause sticker shock, but it's usually not because the growers are getting a lot more for their products.  

Over the next several weeks, 600 California farmers will plant 31,000 acres of strawberries. That includes 12,000 acres in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties alone.

Just 1,200 to 1,500 acres will be grown without chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Although that's not an insignificant amount, it is fewer than expected as demand for organic produce grows steadily and scientists probe ever further into the environmental and health benefits of organic agriculture.

...

"I think that the biggest problem in the organic strawberry world is marketing," said Larry Eddings, president of Pacific Gold Farms, a grower and shipper of conventional and organic strawberries in Watsonville. "The general public would probably like to have beautiful tasty organic strawberries, but when they go to most stores, the premium price that's being asked for the organics is pretty high. Right now, I'm getting $1.50 per pound for organic strawberries. Conventional strawberries are about $1.10-$1.15 a pound. That's not much of a margin, yet, if you go to the grocery store, most of the time organic is being retailed anywhere from 75 percent to 100 percent higher than conventional. I think the world would be happy to pay a fair higher price for good quality organic strawberries, but in many cases, that fair price doesn't exist at retail."

That's certainly a major reason that a number of organic farmers like to sell directly to the public.

Despite the above statistics, organic strawberries comprise just two percent of overall production in the U.S.  Here are a couple of other reasons why.

...organic strawberries often yield 20 to 50 percent less than conventional strawberries. And, unlike most conventional farmers, organic strawberry growers plant strawberries on the same piece of ground every two to four years. Rotating strawberry acres limits the buildup of soil diseases that strawberries are prone to, but it increases the complexity of farm management and crop marketing, and it means frequently growing less-profitable crops on expensive strawberry land.

...

"You have to have ground that has had no chemical input for three years," Eddings said. "So you have a three-year period to become a certified organic farm, and what do you do for the three years while you're becoming certified? Land rents are anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 per acre in this part of the world, so it gets very difficult to get from conventional--through the three years--to organic. ... You have lower yields, and you don't have any premium price during those three years. So you start out in the hole."

Having seen a number of those organic strawberry fields earlier this year, I was amazed at the amount of raised bed plasticulture being used.  The plastic acts as a mulch that controls insects, soil temperature, weeds, etc.  Wish I'd taken a picture of some of it, but (from this link) here's what a plasticulture field that's ready for planting looks like.

Part of me wonders whether raised bed plasticulture is truly in the spirit of organic farming.  Gee, if only more government funding was devoted to organic strawberry farming...

Research into improving fertility, disease resistance and pest control in organic strawberry systems would go a long way toward improving yields, but only a handful of public researchers are working on organic strawberries. Publicly funded agricultural research is generally subject to a stakeholder agenda-setting process that makes it difficult to allocate research dollars to any type of organic farming because organic growers still represent only a small fraction of the nation's total farmers.

But since raised bed plasticulture can be used for both organic and conventional strawberry farming, it's drawing a fair amount a research dollars and effort. 

Affording Health Insurance for Children

Unsurprisingly, it's not always uninsured parents who have uninsured children.     

One in four uninsured children has at least one parent with health coverage, a study by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University reports.

The study highlights an anomaly in health coverage: An estimated 2.4 million children nationwide and 30,000 in Oregon go uninsured even in households where one or both parents have insurance, usually through a job.

Many families fall into an income gap, "earning too much to qualify for public insurance but not enough to afford private insurance for the entire family," the study found.

"These are working families," said Dr. Jennifer DeVoe, a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health & Science University who led the study. "The vast majority--nearly 90 percent--had private coverage. They had access to health care coverage; they just can't afford to cover their kids."

Anomaly?  Considering that most estimates put the number of uninsured children in Oregon at a bit over 100,000, over a quarter of these children have at least one parent with health insurance.  

Let's cut through the advocacy a bit.  The study did not conclude that this was mostly an issue of affordability.  Notice how carefully the following includes, for instance, parents who support their addictions and/or live above their means at the expense of their children.     

"Unless health insurance coverage models are designed to keep entire families covered, some children will continue to get left behind," the study concluded. "It is time to think beyond the health insurance models to achieve a sustainable health care system and the best possible health outcomes for all families." 

As usual, the estimates of the number of uninsured children were calculated from census statistics, which include illegal aliens.  When seeking funding for the coverage of uninsured children, a great place to start would be employers--like Gordon Smith--who are profiting from the labors of illegal aliens.       

Switching to an editorial in The Oregonian...

DeVoe and other researchers struggle to offer solutions to the growing problem. She said one relatively easy short-term fix is for the next Congress to expand and reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP, which the Bush administration fought to reduce last year. That would certainly help all the states, including Oregon.

But the people of this state are going to have to put some money up, too, if they want to see any significant reduction in the large number of children going without insurance, and in many cases, without proper health care.

And by the way, the tobacco industry spent more than $12 million in killing last year's proposal at the ballot--that sum alone would provide care for a lot of Oregon kids.

It was our Democratic majority in Salem, not the tobacco industry, who hung our uninsured children out to dry.  Despite a 20 percent increase in the state budget, the House Democrats--led by Jeff Merkley--chose not to fund the Healthy Kids Plan, instead tying it to a tobacco tax increase that needed voter approval.  That way, they could bash Republican legislators for not caring about children while demonizing smoking as a means of justifying further growth in the state budget.    

It's a testament to what a lousy candidate Merkley is that Smith might be reelected. 

Carbon Emission Derivatives

The following is a short piece from The Guardian in London.  I can understand a portion of the author's cynicism. 

Fresh from the devastation they have wrought on the global financial system, some of the world's leading investment banks meet in London today to discuss how they can "cash in" on carbon. But at least delegates and speakers at the Cashing in on Carbon conference are open about not trying to reduce emissions or helping the environment. Oh, no. This event is to see how "investment banks can profit today from an increasingly diverse range of carbon-related investment opportunities". Particularly reassuring is the emphasis on "hybrid and complex carbon credit structured products", and how to identify investor demand for them in the US; "derivative/synthetic carbon products"; and "sub-index arbitrage strategies". Also, we can refresh our knowledge of the basic options for "productising carbon" and of "access channels for producers ... speculators, proprietary traders and investors."

Why exactly does carbon trading need these types of financial instruments?

Not Enforcing Kyoto

Canada signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol several years ago.  But while talking a good game, the Liberal government essentially did nothing to live up the agreement (previous blog here).  The subsequent Conservative government has given up the pretense of satisfying the agreement, instead setting a lesser goal. 

Recently, some environmental activists sued in an attempt to force the Canadian government to meet the goal.  That was a waste of effort.

The Federal Court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit filed by Friends of the Earth Canada that alleged the government broke the law by missing deadlines for implementing the treaty to cut emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

It is not up to the court to decide if the government acted reasonably in failing to meet its international commitments, and even if it had the power to do so, there was no practical way to enforce a court order, a federal judge ruled.

"Such an order would be so devoid of meaningful content and the nature of any response to it so legally intangible that the exercise would be meaningless in practical terms," Justice Robert Barnes wrote.

Canada's greenhouse gas emissions have grown significantly over the last several years.  Unless it just shut down parts of its economy, there's no way that Canada can meet its Kyoto target.  The same is true for a number of other nations, but it's politically incorrect to admit the inability--actually the unwillingness--to attain the target.

The lawyers worked pro bono, so this lawsuit didn't cost the Friends of the Earth Canada much but credibility.  As one would expect, they're considering further legal action.  There's a copy of the ruling at this link.