The Environment Category Archive

Astonishingly, some people aren't as perceptive as Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion, and think that a carbon tax is a complex plan that will negatively affect a lot of people.

In Ireland, the leader of the Green Party and the Minister for the Environment in the coalition government, John Gormley, has dropped plans for a carbon tax for exactly such reasons.

This the second time the goverment in Ireland has been forced to step back from implementing a carbon tax.

Why?  Who knows?  The reasons given make no sense.  Don't they know that this tax is simple to implement, makes everyone richer, eliminates poverty, has no effect on rural voters, and saves the environment?

That's what Stephane Dion has been explaining to Canadians.  Maybe he needs to give John Gormley a call and explain it to him.

Shouldn't take more than 15 minutes or so. 

Interestingly, a full 11 days after registering thegreenshift.ca to be the online home of Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion's plan for a massive carbon tax, the Liberals registered thegreentaxshift.ca.  That was only days after being told by Jennifer Wright that she did not want to share the name.  Days after registering this alternate name, the Liberals were served with a cease-and-desist order from Jennifer Wright of Green Shift Inc.

Despite registering this alternate name, the Liberals aren't using it, preferring to fight Jennifer Wright for "Green Shift".

Update: I found some more alternate names.  And they were all registered after the launch and after the call to Jennifer Wright, not before.

Right on the heels of a news story reporting that the Liberals claim no reasonable chance of confusion between the Liberal Party's Green Shift tax plan and Jennifer Wright's Green Shift environmental consultancy firm, I find yet another example of confusion between the two.

As before, it is a Liberal who is unable to keep the two straight.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a point of mentioning how the Liberals in Atlantic Canada avoided mention of Stephane Dion's plan for a carbon tax in the media release following their caucus meeting.

The silence speaks volumes.

But oddly, the media made it sound like a simple statement of fact -- that the Liberal media release did not discuss the carbon tax -- is some sort of clever Conservative trick meant to confuse the listener.

Liberal MP Hedy Fry becomes the latest in a line of Liberals attempting to explain Stephane Dion's promised carbon tax.

It is a pitiable performance.

In my last post, I looked at a blog post by Garth Turner, Liberal MP and communications guru for the Liberal Party.  A senior citizen by the name of Jon C Coates had a letter printed in a Halifax newspaper, in which he proceeded to show how a single senior would suffer under Stephane Dion's carbon tax plan.

Garth Turner immediately responded by alleging that this person was not real, and indeed was some sort of fraudulent Conservative Party frontman spewing lies.

This even after Garth Turner had spoken to Jon's wife.

Well, in the best Orwellian fashion, Garth Turner has erased his old post, put up a new one, speaks highly of Jon C Coates, and proceeds to call Stephen Harper a liar.

Hmmm.  I don't see a public apology directed at Jon for publicly declaring Jon to be a liar.

A letter from Jon C Coates of Halifax is getting a lot of attention.  In it, he describes how he is going to suffer as a result of Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion's carbon tax.

Well, Garth Turner is the communications guru handling the carbon tax file.  So he reveals on his blog that (1) Jon C Coates is a liar, and (2) Jon C Coates probably doesn't exist.

Jon C Coates, according to Garth Turner, is likely a fiction concocted by the Prime Minister's Office, and Garth Turner is pulling back the curtain to reveal the ugly truth.

OK, so I called Jon C Coates, and we had a long conversation.

I've been idly checking out references to Jennifer Wright's website greenshift.ca, the site that supports her company Green Shift Inc.  The Liberals under Stephane Dion decided that the name "Green Shift" should really have been theirs, and so named their carbon tax plan The Green Shift, supported with a website thegreenshift.ca.

The reason I've been checking is to see whether Jennifer Wright is correct in her assertion that the Liberals are damaging her brand.  The Liberals say that no one is going to be confused and that the two entities can easily coexist.

The problem is that I find evidence, over and over again, of confusion.  This time from the Liberal's own environment critic, David McGuinty.

As I've posted before, there is something to Jennifer Wright's argument that when the Liberal Party decided to name Stephane Dion's carbon tax plan "The Green Shift", her company Green Shift Inc would suffer from the confusion that would result.

Nonsense, say the Liberals and their apologists.  People will be able to tell the two apart.

Apparently people can't tell them apart.  One such person is Claudette Roy.  She's the Liberal Party's candidate for the riding of Edmonton-Strathcona.

Jennifer Wright of Green Shift Inc is suing the Liberal Party.  The Liberal Party has named their carbon tax plan "The Green Shift", and Wright's position is that the use of that name is hurting her business.

The Liberal contend that there is no reason for people to be confused.

Well, for the second time, I've found a blatant example of confusion is the media.

Even as Stephane Dion is making noises about a fall election (that could be as soon as six weeks from now), the Liberal Party has lost two candidates. 

Garry Oledzki in Saskatchewan and Robert "Bobby" Morrissy in PEI have both stepped down as candidates.

In the case of Bobby Morrissey, it might indeed be a problem selling Stephane Dion's carbon tax.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion could not explain his carbon tax plan to his own aides.

There are a lot of questions that I suspect Stephane Dion will have trouble answering.  I've compiled my favourite 21 questions that I think every Liberal MP ought to be able to answer.

I was among many people who commented when Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay was quoted as saying that the effectiveness of Stephane Dion's carbon tax could not be predicted, or even measured after the fact.

Martha Hall Findlay wrote to me by way of response.  I've posted her note here in its entirety:

British Columbia has a carbon tax.

Quebec has a carbon tax.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion promises to inflict a carbon tax on Canadians if he ever becomes prime minister.

The obvious question -- how do these two levels of taxation interact -- is causing no end of confusion.

But really, there is no reason for confusion.  Stephane Dion has made it clear today that whether Canadians in some parts of the country will be required to pay two taxes is irrelevant to him.

He has the power to make every Canadian pay a price for everything they do, and he intends to use it.

Just how prevalent is the phrase "green shift"?

As we all know, Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion is proposing a carbon tax, which he calls The Green Shift.  There is a company that has been in operation for years called Green Shift Inc that is suing the Liberals for using the name without permission.

But one is "Green Shift" and the other is "The Green Shift", or so argue Liberal Party apologists.

Perhaps it is a significant distinction, but only if the Liberals actually use it.  So what does it mean when Stephane Dion directs people to the website for Green Shift Inc, instead of the party's website for The Green Shift carbon tax?

To me it means that Green Shift Inc boss Jennifer Wright has a point when she says that the names are causing confusion, which is why she needs relief from the courts to force the Liberals to change the name and to pay for damages.

Stephane Dion gets a rough ride while on the road...from his own nominee!

Yet again, Liberals are undermining Stephane Dion's attempt to sell his carbon tax plan (aka The Green Shift) to Canadians.

This time, we have Liberal nominee Gerry Samson in Stormont-Dundas-South-Glengarry admitting, on the record, with Stephane Dion in the room, that Samson can't get local residents to believe him when he tells them that they will benefit from Stephane Dion's new tax.

Well, one guy in the audience loved the idea of the carbon tax.  But then as it turns out, he's a local Liberal Party riding association activist (ed. actually a director and a member of the riding association executive).  Of course, that wasn't mentioned in the media report.  He's described as just a local resident who was really impressed with Stephane Dion.

Is Saskatchewan going to hurt badly by Stephane Dion's carbon tax?  Well, Stephane Dion admitted as much, but Liberal MP Ralph Goodale has taken the time to explain this more clearly. 

Don't worry, he says.

Almost all the oil taken out of the ground in Saskatchewan will be consumed and turned into carbon dioxide emissions without a dime of tax being applied.

Oil company profits are safe!

You might wonder how this helps the environment.  On the other hand, you might have stopped asking that question after Liberal MPs Ken Boshcoff and Martha Hall Findlay have already explained that no one expects any actual environmental benefit from the carbon tax.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion was in Guelph this past week.

It was not an impressive performance.

Liberal Party MP Martha Hall Findlay talks about Stephane Dion's plan for a carbon tax.  The carbon tax will save the planet, right?  We'll be encouraged to consume less energy, right?

According to Findlay, there's no way to really know, or to be sure if it's really working.

Still, that's no reason not to impose a tax on Canadians.

Stephane Dion and the Liberals ignored a cease-and-desist letter from Jennifer Wright of Green Shift Inc., over the use of the name "Green Shift" to describe the Liberal carbon tax.

As a result, the Liberals are about to get sued.  We don't know by how much, but it'll be over $2 million.

And this despite Garth Turner's veiled threat to dig around her private life if she went ahead with the lawsuit.

Stephane Dion is trying to convince an interesting cross-section of people that his carbon tax is a good idea.

These people aren't interested in taxes though.   They want Stephane Dion to shut down the oilsands completely.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion is prepared to tax the oil operations of Alberta and Saskatchewan, to punish them for being the source of so much carbon dioxide that is wrecking the planet.

Kyoto (the protocol, not Stephane Dion's dog) demands it.

It makes no such demand of countries like India. 

It doesn't seem fair, at first glance.  Take a deeper look, and it's grossly unfair.

And I mean gross.

It wasn't too long ago when David Suzuki was urging young people to find ways to imprison politicians who don't interpret scientific evidence in the same way Suzuki does.

With polls showing a majority of people in British Columbia are against the provincial carbon tax, Suzuki has tried to play it a bit more casually.

The problem is that he comes off as nervous.  Like he's worried that the crowds aren't listening to him anymore.

Stephane Dion and the Liberals are looking more and more like the classic Liberal Party of years past, playing region against region based on vote potential.

I don't have a simplistic computer model to use to predict the future.  I leave that sort of "science" to the global warming nutters.

But there are hints of what is coming.  I'm afraid it'll be loud and incessant.

One thing that has been puzzling more and more is the way Stephane Dion speaks of his carbon tax changing people's behavior with regards to using energy, while his actual plan seems to be predicated on no change in behavior at all.

Then, after chatting with a newspaper columnist acquaintance of mine, it hit me.  Stephane Dion is boiling the frog.

Why didn't I see it before?

I wrote a post recently in which I tried to understand just how much the carbon tax being proposed by Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion would reduce emissions.  In his plan, he predicts $15 billion in revenue from a tax of $40 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions paid on fuels.

After struggling with the numbers, and a couple of false starts, I came to the conclusion that the emissions predicted in Year 4 of Stephane Dion's new tax regime are not any different from the emissions today.

I thought that odd, but then maybe it was reasonable.  Perhaps Stephane Dion figures that four years is not enough time to see the effect of a new universal tax on energy.  It takes time for factories to shut down and move to Mexico.

But in an interview with the editorial board of Sun Media, Stephane Dion says there will be large reductions by 2012 (the impilicit assumption being that he can implement a tax in 2009).

That doesn't make sense. 

I swing between amusement and frustration when I read comments from well-meaning environmentalist types who think that if all bought electric cars, we wouldn't need oil.

It belies a fundamental ignorance of how the world works, and makes me nervous about these people ever being in charge.

In particular, I'm looking at a comment on the Liberal Party discussion board, in which the person posting says the world will be so different in 10 years when we stop using petroleum to power transportation having switched to electricity.

I shake my head.  What did they teach these people in science class in high school?

This situation that has developed over the name "Green Shift" is not as amusing as it seemed to be at first.  The name "Green Shift" is a trademark, and the Liberal Party lifted it in an attempt to make Stephane Dion's carbon tax seem more palatable.

But the company that owns the trademark is mad, and is planning to sue.

They should sue.  In fact, they have to.

Stephane Dion's carbon tax plan promises to apply a tariff against the carbon content of imported goods.

As with everything else in the carbon tax plan, there are no details, just promises that Canada would benefit.  Ignore that.  like everything else in the carbon tax plan, it's nonsense.  When you actually think about what the tariff could mean, it's clear that Canadians would suffer.

And like everything else in the carbon tax plan, it will do nothing to limit emissions.

Peter Duffy, writing in The Chronicle Herald, suggests that keeping the runways at Halifax's international airport in good condition is a waste of time.  Fuel prices means fewer flights.

What's the point of having an airport?

If Stephane Dion gets to implement his carbon tax, I wonder just what else we can just throw away as being unnecessary.

OK, I've got a question.  Where the heck did Stephane Dion get his numbers for Canadian fuel consumption?

I'm trying to see where his numbers come from, and they seem way too high.

Update: No wait, I forgot to factor for the increase in weight for carbon dioxide.  That makes the numbers work.

Update: No wait, the numbers have a problem after all.  I successfully showed that the 2007 fuel consumption rates match up with the carbon tax revenues predicted by the Liberals in Year 4 of the plan.  But that's not right either.  The whole point is that fuel usage would drop.  Why aren't they dropping?  What's the point of this tax?  Just to raise money?

[This is a reposted version of the first post, now deleted.]

The carbon tax announcement is coming.  All questions will be answered.  Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion will make it all clear.

Well, I have a question.  Am I going to be taxed on the tax?

With so much of the planet's technology based on crude oil, it seems pointless to think about getting off oil.  That's just a fact.  The real solution to rising oil prices is more supply, and there is always buzz around artificially creating oil using microorganisms.  Of course, the devil is in the details. 

Not the little details, but the really big ones.

The reaction of the government to a proposed cap-and-trade system being set up between Ontario and Quebec seems short-sighted to me.  Isn't there a way to make this work in a way that everyone wins?

Green Party leader Elizabeth May seems to lack the most basic ability all successful politicians have to pause in order to consider her words carefully, and then answer a question without offending people or making light of a serious subject.

In an interview with the Guelph Mercury editorial board, Elizabeth May says she was close to slitting her wrists after listening to the leader's debate during the last election, finding the politicians remarks too well packaged.

The editorial board was taken aback by Elizabeth May's flippant reference to suicide, and as a result, Elizabeth May spoiled an opportunity to deliver the Green Party message.

It makes me wonder just why the Green Party puts up with her.  It isn't the first time this has happened.

Stephane Dion is going to roll out a carbon tax plan.  Canadians are praising it or denouncing it, without any idea of what the plan is actually going to be.

Let's try and figure it out.  Just the base carbon tax rate and nothing more.  It's not really all that hard to do.

After all the talk about a carbon tax, my mind keeps coming back to the same thing.  Why are we talking about it at all?  I mean, The Liberal Party has not released any details.  But by allowing the Conservatives to know ahead of time that an announcement concerning a carbon tax is in the very near future, the Conservatives have been able to frame the issue.

You would think Liberals would have learned that by now.

The story was apparently leaked.  But I thought that maybe, just maybe, the Liberals were being clever.  Perhaps this was a trial balloon.

Then I looked at it again, and realized there is no way this could be a trial balloon.  It was a leak, plain and simple.  Worse, it was designed to hurt Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion.  Worse still, the leak came from an Ontario Liberal, and not a Quebec Liberal, which means Stephane Dion seems to be no closer to solving his leadership problems, and indeed his problems might be growing.

Ever wonder why a consumption tax (like a carbon tax) is politically unpopular compared to a sales tax (like the GST)?

The Liberals under Jean Chretien wondered that in 1993 when they took over from the Progressive Conservatives.  Jean Chretien had promised to eliminate the GST, but of course, he didn't.  Different alternatives to the GST are discussed in this report.  It is very interesting to note what the researcher had to say about consumption taxes, and it helps understand why we still have the GST.

Of course, under a government led by Stephane Dion, we would get the worst of both worlds.

Stephane Dion's carbon tax is not a gas tax, or so members of the Liberal Party are supposed to say.  Too bad not all the Liberals got the memo.

I haven't written about Stephane Dion's carbon tax idea, not since it was announced that he intended to make a carbon tax a cornerstone of a Liberal Party platform in the next election.

I wanted my thoughts to gel, to consider just what such a tax could do, good and bad.  I'm glad I waited, because as I began to peal away the layers, I realized that a carbon tax is really unlike any tax every imposed by a government.  It is guaranteed to succeed.

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.

Stephane Dion sported a green scarf at the Liberal Party convention.  He was the green choice, the former environment minister who was going to lead the Liberal Party into taking ownership of the Green agenda in Canada.  Stephane Dion would lead the Liberals back to power on a wave of environmental sensibility.

Well, push came to shove, and Stephane Dion is showing his true colours.  It isn't green, but a very obvious yellow streak.

If you listen to David Suzuki, you'd hear about how human activity is causing the Earth to warm up.  Specifically, how a mere 30 million Canadians are supposed to shoulder a large amount of the blame.

His rhetoric has become increasingly heated, ironically.

Well, it seems that the heat generated by his latest comments has caused David Suzuki to throttle it back. 

David Suzuki has been in hot water this week over comments he made (on two different occasions) that politicians ought to be jailed for expressing skepticism about climate change (specifically, about David Suzuki's view on climate change).

Go way back, and you encounter an entirely different David Suzuki.  This man pleaded for Canadians to be skeptical of science, to exert influence and oversight over the scientific community, and to be careful of the hidden agenda behind scientists and their theories.

I kid you not.

There is something called going after "low hanging fruit".  When confronted with a large task, one approach is to go after the most easily solved problems first.

Engineers are often taught to do the opposite -- tackle the hardest problem first.  The reason is that you will almost certainly spend too much time on the low hanging fruit.  Such a problem is solved easily, of course, but you will try to do a complete a job as possible, to the point of gold-plating (that is, doing more than is necessary).  Often it is to avoid tackling the big problem while still looking like you're make progress towards reaching the overall goal.

The bad thing is that you've used up precious time you'll need to tackle the hard problem you've put off.  In fact, you are almost sure to fail now.

Environmentalists are like that.  They go after the low hanging fruit.  Kyoto is all about low hanging fruit.  Get the industrialized world to carry the load, since they have the technological prowess to make it happen, and the democratic institutions that can be used to compel politicians to go along.  On the other hand, tough nuts like India and China are deferred until some unspecified future time.  These countries and others like them present difficult problems -- a lack of sophisticated industrial infrastructure, huge energy-hungry populations, and most importantly in the cases like China, governments that are authoritarian or even dictatorial and have no reason to listen to anyone, not to their own people and certainly not to foreign busybodies.

So the foreign busybodies make excuses about why these countries are allowed to skip any effort to meet Kyoto targets, and they go after countries like Canada that contribute a tiny percent of green house gas emissions. 

The busybodies will waste a great deal of effort on Canada because Canada is a low hanging fruit.  China, on the other hand, continues to build coal-fired power plants daily.

But here's another example you might not know about.  The Turks and Caicos Islands are negligible when it comes to things like global warming, ocean pollution, ozone depletion, or anything else.  Environmentally-speaking, the impact on the ecology of these islands is zero.

But the government of this British dependency has declared that one tiny island that makes up this tiny place is going "green". 

And David Suzuki is flying down there to celebrate this achievement.

It's amusing to listen to David Suzuki.  David Suzuki wants politicians who are not avowed environmentalists thrown in jail.

Yeah, he's a loon.

But how can David Suzuki sell his particular brand of eco-nuttiness?  Seriously, why does anyone listen to him? 

The answer is simple: money. 

He spends money on sophisticated marketing professionals.  His only concern is that these people succeed in getting him in front of the cameras and in the public eye where he can revel in his foam-flecked fury.

I don't think he really cares if anything gets done in favour of the environment.  I say that because the company he pays to help get his message out also takes money from several large oil sands concerns.  If David Suzuki was really committed to his enviro-jihad, he would make sure all his minions were as pure and virtuous as himself.

But instead, he takes money from his naive followers and hands it to people who work hard to promote oil sands development.

Better yet, he takes money from the oil sands developers themselves, and hands it to the people who work hard to promote oil sands development.

There's your saint of the environment.

David Suzuki has definitely jumped the shark.  The environmental crusader has morphed into a fatwa-issuing green mullah.  Now it seems that if you don't listen to him, you should go to jail.

In Europe, new emissions rules are coming into effect, and no one is happy.

The automakers are upset because the rules are too stringent.

The environmentalists are upset because the rules are not stringent enough.

Regular people are upset because the cost of a car will go up significantly.

And rich people?  Oh, they're fine.  Their cars are exempt from the rules.

Joyce Murray is the Liberal Party candidate fighting for the seat of Vancouver Quadra.  It is a strong Liberal seat, and no one would be surprised to see it go Liberal again.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion would be especially pleased.  Not only would the Liberals retain a seat, Joyce Murray would bolster the Liberal reputation on the environment.  As an MLA in the BC legislature, Murray was the Minister of Water, Land and Air Protection in Gordon Campbell's cabinet.

Like Stephane Dion, she didn't actually do much for the environment.  And that's a good thing for Stephane Dion should she win in Vancouver Quadra.  Stephane Dion does not need another MP in his caucus quietly doubting Dion's commitment to the environment.  Another pseudo-environmentalist would no doubt tell Stephane Dion just how much of a great environmental leader he is, without bringing up any uncomfortable facts.

Stephane Dion believes Canada cannot meet the Kyoto targets.

Stephane Dion believes Canada can meet the Kyoto targets.

Who knows what Stephane Dion believes?  Who knows who tells Stephane Dion what to believe?

Does Stephane Dion believe in anything?

Maybe he believes in fairies.

This is a piece about the flexibility of Chris Benedetti. He is simultaneously a Liberal Party supporter, a head of several environmental organizations, a consultant encouraging companies to work hard to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, and a lobbyist for a Washington-based bromine industry front group dedicated to keeping the earth-warming chemical compounds that drive their profits from being subjected to further regulation in Canada.

Yeah, that last one is the one that is supposed to make you do a double take.

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are protecting the world against Chinese bullying rooted in the chronic Chinese gripe about being the victim of humiliation. The Chinese have made it clear that environmental treaties are a tool for punishing the West. Stephen Harper figures any environmental treaty designed around that premise will not be good for Canada or for the environment.

And for that, Stephane Dion and Jack Layton have labelled Stephen Harper the enemy.

I've received a dionesque threat delivered by email.

Normally, I would have no concerns whatsoever that Stephane Dion will embarrass the Canadian government in Bali, where there is a major UN conference is taking place concerning climate change. The leader of the Liberal Party has taken it upon himself to go to Bali, though it is not clear why. As the leader of the opposition, Stephane Dion cannot speak on behalf of the government or explain government policy. He has promised in the past never to criticize the Canadian government in front of foreign dignitaries.

Indeed, in a recent incident, Stephane Dion had an opportunity to criticize Prime Minister Stephen Harper to a foreign official, and yet he was very careful to avoid doing so.

At the time, I congratulated him on it, and based on that incident, I have every confidence Stephane Dion will not disappoint me this time.

And yet...I'm nervous. There are signs that Stephane Dion is planning to embarrass all of us.

How will environmentalists succeed at terrifying people into following them by threatening death at the hands of planetary weather when the evidence shows a steady and dramatic decline in weather-related deaths?

The first thing, of course, is to point out that Big Oil is somewhere in the picture. That way the environmentalists can skip trying to actually refute the data.

Canada is a country filled with people who like to drive fast. How do we discourage them? I have an idea that takes a different approach to punishment, and so might have some success while the traditional approaches are running out of gas.

And that's where I'm focused -- on the gas.

Elizabeth May blames Prime Minister Stephen Harper for Canada being in the situation in which it finds itself, and that is that Canada cannot meet the Kyoto commitments.

But Elizabeth May also blamed Stephane Dion, or so it seems.

A bit of a blooper, I think.

Kyoto was a fundamentally stupid plan.

And its failure wasn't the fault of George W Bush or of Stephen Harper.

Heresy has reached new levels. Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner at Oxford would run the risk of being burned at the stake by enraged environmentalists if it weren't for the carbon dioxide that would be released as a result.

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, listened to the Conservative Throne Speech. In it, the government made it clear that Kyoto was no longer a concern. The targets could not be reached, and there was no interest in even trying.

Her response to Mike Duffy during an interview last night? That's fine. We don't need to fight an election over this.

You could almost see the strings reaching up to the rafters where Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion was pulling on his Green puppet.

Jean Chretien's memoirs are of great interest with regards to Canada's recent political history, but what of the present?

Clearly, the element of the yet-to-be-officially-released memoirs of immediate interest is Jean Chretien's allegation that Canada was on track to meet Kyoto Protocol commitments until Paul Martin took over, with Stephane Dion as his environment minister.

But what might most significant is the apparent insignificance of Stephane Dion.

Jean Chretien's memoirs are coming out, and boy, don't they just play into the whole "don't air Liberal Party problems in public" issue in a big way?

Stephane Dion is not going to be served well by the assertion by Jean Chretien that Canada was on track to meet Kyoto commitments until Paul Martin took over as prime minister in December 2003. Paul Martin quickly put Stephane Dion into his cabinet as environment minister in July 2004. Dion served in that role until the fall of Paul Martin's government nearly two years later in February 2006.

Sure sounds to me that Jean Chretien's published memoirs are going to put the blame for Canada's poor environmental performance right on Stephane Dion's shoulders.

And we already know that people who go public with problems inside the Liberal Party are "stupid f*cking idiots".

News from the CBC is that the upcoming Throne Speech will make it a guiding principle of this government that the Kyoto targets are not attainable. Stephane Dion will have to backtrack on a year's worth of statements if he is going to arrange that the Throne Speech not be defeated and so avoid an election he doesn't want to fight.

So Dion is likely to let the Throne Speech pass, counting on a combination his own Liberals staying home as per Dion's orders, while being protected by a phalanx of Conservative MPs voring for the Throne Speech. Safely protected by the Conservatives, Liberal leader Stephane Dion will be able to speak loudly and strongly in favour of Kyoto and how he has the solution.

Lots of words, but no action. Deliberately no action.

Sounds like the definition of political impotence.

Put aside that the Kyoto Protocol is fatally flawed, based on bogus number that even supporters admit would have little impact on their own much-vaunted (but equally useless) computer model predictions. The fact is, where it matters, no one cares.

China is exempt from the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, given a pass because it argued that the "world's factory" needed more growth to finish emerging from the status of a developing country. Sure. Whatever. But even if China, as one of the planet's largest producers of greenhouse gases, was included in Kyoto, it wouldn't have mattered.

As illustrated on Car Free Day, one of the world's most carefully controlled populations under the rule of one the world's most enduring dictatorships simply ignored the government-supported environmental initiative.

NDP leader Jack Layton will protect Canada's claim to sovereignty in the Far North by making sure it stays cold.

No, I don't know what one has to do with the other either.

Liberal leader Stephane Dion has no choice. The threats must end. If Stephane Dion can make Kyoto work with his plan then he must force an election and just do it, instead of threatening to possibly call an election if Prime Minister Stephen Harper doesn't implement Stephane Dion's plan on Dion's behalf.

I keep coming back to the SSL certificate. Why is the SSL certificate for ClimateForChange.ca listed to be the certificate for stephanedion.ca? The more I think about it, the more uneasy I become. There is just no way that should have happened by accident. What I do understand of how certificates work suggests that this connection is a big deal.

ClimateForChange.ca s going to sue the federal government over its Kyoto Plans. An example of grassroots action? Or a political move by one of the opposition parties?

But how could that be if ClimateForChange.ca is an independent non-profit group?

Environmentalist groups seem to boost for the Liberal Party regardless of the poor Liberal record on the environment. Some people are starting to wonder exactly why that is. If they read my blog, they would know. But I don't mind explaining it again. It has nothing to do with the environment, of course. It has everything to do with money, and more accurately, going back to a time when money was dolled out with no strings attached.

The world is about to collapse. The environment is on the verge of complete and utterly irreversible destruction.

We are all going to die!

But there are still limits to what humans can be asked to do avoid this calamity.

Well, there are limits to how much Severn Suzuki is willing to do. The rest of us, of course, have to carry the load.

I've given environmentalists a hard time on this blog. David Suzuki in particular. I've also made it clear that I find the whole theory that global warming is (a) actually happening and (b) the result of human activity and (c) subject to modification by humans if it is really happening very suspicious. I've also made it clear that I am in no position to absorb huge cost of living increases driven by a theory that a lot of respected scientists think is completely bogus.

You might think I gleefully emit greenhouse gases in copious amounts while dumping toxic chemicals into the local water table, or something equally evil.

I don't. In fact, we focus a lot on reducing the waste created by our large family, while at the same time helping out those who need help. Let me tell you about Freecycle.

Elizabeth May and Stephane Dion want Canadians to be gas poor. Pay more and more for gas until they can't afford much else. Maybe this is not what they really want to happen, but it will be the consequence of raising taxes on gas. Gas consumption is pretty much inelastic unless you are wealthy and have a lot of disposable income. Trying to choke off that disposable income used for driving by affluent Canadians will result in choking the rest of us...literally.

Just some thoughts about entropy and energy usage and how it links to population and the environment.

David Suzuki says Canadians are willing to pay, nay, are demanding that they be forced to pay, carbon taxes. An Angus Reid poll suggests exactly the opposite.

Environmentalists moan and groan that Canada is not doing it's share when it comes green issues. The fact is that Canada has plenty of green credit to spend.

John Oakley's column in the National Post relates carbon offsets to indulgences. I think he's on to something, but I think his analogy is off. Carbon offsets are less like indulgences and more like tithes paid to the Church of Green.

Fans of organic food are bitter because the commercial success has attracted big business. But of course, they reserve their anger for big business. What about the organic food producer who was all too happy to sell out for a handsome profit?

When the Liberal Party fashioned its environmental policy, would it suprise you to learn that one of the people called out for special mention in helping complete that work is in fact the Director of Communications for the multinational manufacturer of Coppertone sunscreen products? That company has, for over ten years, been working very hard to ensure that North American consumers are obsessed with the question of sun exposure, while at the same time making sure that those same consumers understand that the only protection against UV rays comes from the liberal application of sunscreen, instead of, say, wearing a light shirt.

Schering, the pharmaceutical in question, has been attacked for taking climate science, as imprecise and questionable as it is, and spinning it a certain way for corporate profit. I am curious if Liberal Party environmental policy was similarly nudged this way and that in order to profit the shareholders of Schering. The real question, of course, is why the Liberals would have given such a key position to a senior member of this particular corporation.

The Skyfish Project is an "internet thinktank" set up by Severn Cullis-Suzuki, David Suzuki's daughter. But it is really a parked domain with spammy links for alien t-shirts and bizarre pseudo-Catholic end-of-time prophecies.

In my first post on uber-environmentalist David Suzuki, I wonder if he sees himself as some sort of Medieval lord.

In my second post, I wonder if he is just a garden variety hypocrite.

In this post, I look into just what drives David Suzuki to do what he does.

More accurately, who drives him.

Consider David Suzuki's grand property (named "Tangwyn") on Quadra Island for him and his wife in contrast to my disgusting excess of a three-bedroom detached home on a tiny lot for a household of six. I suppose environmentalism has been good to Suzuki. Everything I hear suggests the world Suzuki wants me to have doesn't include a vast forested estate.

But then Suzuki says he struggles with what it means to be an environmentalist.

Must be so hard for him.

Ever notice that the world the environmentalists want us to live in is a lot like Medieval Europe? And in more ways than you might think?

This senior UN official, Yvo de Boer, seems satisfied that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have a satsifactory approach to the Kyoto Protocol. What is the punishment for apostasy from the Church of Kyoto?

Probably watching David Suzuki videos.

Breaking: Ersatz Colgate toothpaste in the United States might contain DEG. And I just bought a suspicious tube of toothpaste in my local dollar store in Canada.

Brush your teeth...and die! Thanks to Chinese quality controls. On the other hand, the toothy grin on the skull-and-crossbones has never looked so bright and shiny.

Al Gore's Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth is being shown in Canadian schools, often over and over again. Kevin Libin of the National Post makes the point that the film has problems with the facts, making it a questionable educational tool. But if you look at the curricula guide that accompanies the film, it becomes clear that facts aren't all that important.

Stephane Dion is going to have some fun in the next election if the Liberal Party is going to field candidates who are on record as severely criticizing the leader. This is not the case of long-time Liberals who no doubt have critical comments on record. I'm talking about one Liberal in particular, Drew Adamick, hoping to win the nomination in Cariboo-Prince George.

The Chinese are terrified that the pet food scandal will cause their food exports to collapse in the face of angry Western consumers.

What they don't get is that China primarily exports lies. We ought to close the doors until that changes.

Young Jesse Fontaine is very concerned about the way the Ontario government has decided to communicate with teens. I don't expect he'll get an answer, but I think he's posed some interesting questions.

Jeff Monaghan, the former Environment Canada contract employee arrested for allegedly leaking secret government documents, has written a letter to a newspaper taking issue with being labelled an anarchist. Has the media made a mistake, extrapolating from Jeff Monaghan's known associates to judge Monaghan by the company he keeps? Or is there some sort of documentary evidence in which Monaghan states that he is an anarchist?

In his own words, on his radio show.

Is Jeff Monaghan a quiet and withdrawn character driven to act by the hypocrisy of the Harper government, as some would allege? I'm not so sure, if only because quiet and withdrawn characters don't host talk radio shows.

I suppose it's one thing to be part of an anti-globalization riot, where you are lost in the mass of rock-throwing mask-wearing anonymity. But when the media focus is like a laser-beam, then anarchists get nervous.

The Suicide Pilots, the band for which Jeff Monaghan plays the drums, has issued a statement.