With a huge land area and a relatively small population they are zero carbon already. If not carbon negative!

Yea but all the carbon dioxide that they produce is absorbed by plants in their own country and some.

Posted By: tonyYea but all the carbon dioxide that they produce is absorbed by plants in their own country and some.

Are you sure? There's a lot of desert in Australia.

Paul in Montreal.

Posted By: tonyI suppose Canada might be carbon neutral then might it?

Not a chance! With the exploitation of the Athabasca oil sands, Canada's CO2 emissions have increased by about 25-30% since we signed the Kyoto protocol. So much gas is being used to extract the oil that it will run out quite soon - to such an extent that there's plans to build 4 nuclear reactors to supply the heat to raise the steam to extract the oil. Problem is that the amount of water being used is more than the long term flow rate of the Athabasca river. Quebec and British Columbia are probably carbon neutral or even negative given the large forestry industries in these provinces plus the >98% hydroelectricity- but Alberta certainly offsets this. By the way, there's more forests in Quebec than all of the Scandinavian countries put together and the installed Hydroelectric capacity is about equal (including the sites in Newfoundland/Labrador on the Quebec border) to all UK generation capacity ... all for a population of around 8 million. But, then, most people heat with electricity - and even with old fashioned resistance heating with a COP of 1, cost is similar to using natural gas. But, then, the natural gas company is also owned by HydroQuebec (who, of course, are monopoly supplies of electricity here - at around 2.3p per kwh).

Paul in Montreal.