The Earth is warming, and human activity is likely to blame. Climates are changing across the world, including in Canada’s far north. In other parts of the world, some crops will fail, some species will be pressed to extinction and some low-lying territories will be flooded.
But this parade of horribles cannot be used to justify any form or remedial action. Many of the proposals put forth by environmentalists would do little to stop global warming, and would simply act as transfer-payment schemes from rich countries to poor ones. As Terence Corcoran has written at great length and with great frequency in the Financial Post, many activists are exploiting concern over climate change to justify the creation of state-managed “green economies” — socialism with a Gaian face.
Environment Minister Jim Prentice is to be commended for opposing this agenda. Mr. Prentice will head Canada’s delegation to the Copenhagen conference on climate change next month and says categorically that Canada will not sign any agreements that force painful adjustments on Western countries while major polluters such as China, India and Brazil go free.
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Good for Mr. Prentice. Allowing ourselves to be conned into throwing billions, if not trillions of dollars, into “fixing” a non-existent problem is suicide.
Seen any sunspots lately? If anyone thinks that your “government” in the form of municiple , provincial/territorial or federal government apparatus can ameliorate the outdoor temperature, they need to go back to school. The only temperature they will fix for you is the one inside your home or place of business, if it survives.
Your governments are already complicit in “wealth transfers” based on green initiatives. Your wealth is currently being transferred to government and it’s employees on the green front, in the form of recycling fees, waste management fees, expanding government “business” replacing private sector activity with public sector activity and driving private sector initiatives, out of the market place.
Pretty soon there will be only one employer, government, because they know best.
As for Mr Prentice, I’ll believe that his government is defending our best interests when they quit pounding money down a rathole (literally) in the form of government/industry subsidized CO2 capture. The coal bed methane bunch fraced ground water aquifers to the detriment of rural people’s water wells, so now we’re going to pump CO2 under pressure to deeper storage and not do even more damage?
Ouuta sight, outta mind seems to be the thimpking on this idea and we will be paying for it in the form of higher power bills, gasoline prices, heating oil/gas taxes. Man, it’s a business I would love to get into, but then I’m not Transalta, Atco sized. Besides, who is going to monitor if they even do what they say they’ll do. I can build a pipeline to nowhere, point it down and who’s to know that anything is actually going under ground?
I think Prentice has it almost right except that Canada should walk away from Copenhagen and simply not be a contributor to this obscene power grab by the UN. There is no deal to made here that even remotely involves the UN. They are unaccountable, unelected and corrupt. For the moment I will give the government the benefit of the doubt given that I’m not privy to perfect knowledge but I view any negotiations involving the UN as betrayal. Our only real consideration at the moment is the US.
It may only take one major govt to stand up and say “Global Warming is Crap” and others will follow suit. So far no one has the balls and they all just continue with the foot dragging waiting for someone else to go first.
BrianC is right that someone, anywhere has to stand up and say stop the madness. Unfortunately most of leaders of the major countries have drank so much of the kool-aid that they can no longer see the problem. Harper who would do it with a majority at this time cannot, all he can do is continue to delay the rest in a rear guard action to protect the major economies from this madness.
The Earth is warming, and human activity is likely to blame.
Good for Mr. Prentice but he needs to do some research. Of course we should be doing eveything possibe to reduce pollution on all fronts. But human activity being the cause of global warming? I don’t believe that whatsoever.
The Earth is warming, and human activity is likely to blame. - LIKE HELL IT IS!!
The Earth is warming, and human activity is likely to blame.
This sentence sounds like consensus, not fact. Anyone who wants to spend gobs of money on something not yet proven should have their heads examined.