The Written Word: Rafe Mair Feb 3rd
By Rafe Mair
Saturday, February 03, 2007 03:44 AM
Isn't it amazing how politicians from coast to coast have, within about 10 days, become raging environmentalists? It's the wearing of the green six weeks early!
Kyoto has beome an almost hallowed doctrine which we must and will live up to.
Except, as Jeffrey Simpson points out in yesterday's Toronto Globe and Mail, it is impossible for Canada to come close to what it signed on to.
We signed, then did nothing.
It was almost as if by doing nothing we were somehow relieved of our obligations because they were impossible to fulfill. Sort of like, "We destroyed the village because that was the only way we could save it."
The global warming we're told about is real and imminent. The pseudo-scientists who make a good living telling corporate assemblies that we have nothing to worry about, that this is just a natural cycle, always irresponsible now are demonstrated as damned fools as well. I hope against hope that they have enough shame that we've heard the last of them.
Politicians are always looking for a way out which appears to the voter as fair and reasonable. We will now hear that because the US and China have no plans to implement Kyoto, or anything else for that matter, that we're off the hooks. An extension of that theory would have all the world's young boys stealing candy from the store on the basis that everyone else is doing it.
This harsh reminder is necessary, however. The environmental problems -- from Kyoto to dead oceans -- will cost money.
A lot of money.
But there's this consolation - done properly and with appropriate determination, greening our atmosphere, lands and oceans could become a multitude of industries as Dr. David Suzuki has long pointed out.
The final word is, in my view, now this: "Fix it, all of it, starting now! Or we perish."
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Posted by: Chadermando on February 3 2007 1:37 PM
The Liberals were just as reluctant to confront the tar sands industry, even though most of the extracted crude is for export - we get to keep the enormous greenhouse gas emissions and the guilt heaped on us by the international community.