Stephane Dion signs the KYOTOplus pledge

a blog about news and politics by steve janke

Stephane Dion signs the KYOTOplus pledge

Wednesday, April 02, 2008 at 11:43 AM

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Environmentalists ought to be pickier. They ought to be more careful about who they call their friends.

Bragging about how Stephane Dion signed a petition makes these particular environmentalists look pathetic.

Nothing beats global warming like a good old petition:

Environment and public interest organizations have launched KYOTOplus, a national petition against global warming.

A petition against global warming? I, the undersigned, demand that global warming stop. Doesn't anyone read this copy?

The actual petition is not against global warming, of course:

I call on elected officials to ensure that Canada honours its Kyoto commitment and sets a national target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 per cent (from the 1990 level) by 2020.

But then these people don't strike me as too clever. They are playing up the fact that Stephane Dion is signing this petition:

Opposition party leaders Stéphane Dion, Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton joined in a formal signing ceremony today on Parliament Hill. Prime Minister Harper and Environment Minister John Baird were also invited but declined to participate.

One day an environmental group will actually impress me with an attempt to get real credibility by admitting that a signature from Stephane Dion, who as environment minister watched as Canadian emissions grew and grew, and who as leader of the opposition has over and over again abstained when called up to vote against the government as it pushed forward its own environmental program that explicitly drops the Kyoto Protocol, calling it a dead letter and fundamentally flawed from the outset.

Well, now that Stephane Dion and Jack Layton have both signed the petition, it'll be interesting to contrast just how each of them act to follow through.