Kyoto Update - Prime Minister Martin and U.S. Ambassador Slug It Out

Kyoto Flap With U.S. Ambassador

PM Martin chastised the Americans during the recent Montreal conference on the environment, and during the current election campaign, for refusing to accept the Kyoto Protocol even though it seems beyond doubt that the U.S. has, as deliberate policy, outperformed Canada in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.S. Ambassador was right to respond. All Martin was interested in was a cheap shot to make him appear to be standing up to the U.S., in the hopes of gaining some votes against the other political parties.

In respect of Kyoto, all the Liberal government seems, at the moment, to be intending, is to rob Canadian taxpayers by planning to transfer great gobs of money to undeserving 3rd world countries who are continuing to make great strides in the wrong direction - increasing their emissions and industrical pollution. This is the so-called carbon credits industrial countries can "purchase" to atone for being industrial countries. It won't do anything to reduce world emission levels.

Canadians seem to be singularly uninformed about, or at least unconcerned with, this prospect. The money the Liberal's will ultimately channel to 3rd world polluters, like China, is going to make the cost of Adscam, the gun registry, the federal sponsorship program and Martin's daycare plans, seem like a drop in the bucket. Perhaps that is the same bucket covering out collective heads.

None of the leaders during the November 17th, 2005, debate touched on this major issue. Everyone seems to have accepted the legitimacy of the Kyoto Agreement as a matter of fact. Yet, there is overwhelming evidence that the basis for the Kyoto Agreement is false because the determination made by the proponents of Kyoto that human agency has contributed significantly to global warming is not established. The most likely culprit in the growth of global warming is the variable activity of the Sun, which is the major engine of Earth's weather and temperature patterns. In view of that, committing to policies which may very well impoverish the country, based on fairy tales and romantic assumptions, is extremely foolish and misguided. The Liberal gun control program is another example of foolish and misguided policies based on unproven assumptions and expenditures committed for political, rather than practical and sensible, reasons. This is a hallmark of Liberal policy.

A multitude of respected and reputable scientists, including many whose expertise relates directly or at least closely to factors affecting the environment have severely criticized the environmental lobby and its so-called experts for sloppy research and sloppy and unsupported conclusions, challenging the notions upon which Kyoto has been founded.

It appears that the lobby epitomized by David Suzuki and the support of many journalists has frightened enough of the public, including the politicians, to ensure support for Kyoto, evidence or no evidence, facts or no facts.

I, for one, am grateful that the U.S. government under George W. Bush, has had the good sense to refuse to buy into the foolishness. Yet, realizing that global warming is a fact, and that we should not be contributing to it, no matter how little overall effect our contributions have, the Bush administration and U.S. industry have made real efforts to reduce emissions, outpacing any efforts in or by Canada.

This is the avenue Canada should be moving down - devising domestic policies aimed at reducing pollution and emissions, using the money that might have been used to pay those so-called "carbon credits" to defray the admittedly high cost of such policies, rather than throwing it away. Any benefits from spending that money in Canada would accrue where they belong - at home.