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| Edmonton - Tuesday, November 26, 2002 - by: Ron Thornton |
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CO2
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Like Mario deSantis, I am not a scientist.
In fact, I've never even played one on television. However, while I agree that we
should cut down on pollutants in our atmosphere, I am in a quandary as to how carbon
dioxide emissions can be compared to acid rain or any other form of pollution for
that matter. |
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concerns
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A reduction in GDP, or crushing costs for fuels, or a loss of
employment and family income, or punitive taxation, though it might not concern some,
does concern me. Taking away funding from such areas as education and health care
in order to pay for additional corporate welfare or bogus credits to third world
nations also concerns me. Rushing to do something about climatic change; a natural
phenomenon that brought us the ice age, removed seas, and even delivered killer blizzards
and devastating drought over the past 120 years; does not. |
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devastating
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As deSantis mentioned in his recent contribution to this forum, 97
countries have ratified the Kyoto Accord. He doesn't mention that none will
be as devastated economically as Canada, that most of those nations can look
upon Kyoto as a cash cow at our expense, nor that the Accord will have a catastrophic
economic impact on Canada while accomplishing nothing measurably positive
for the environment. |
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carbon
dioxide
not a
pollutant
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Those aforementioned 97 nations, to use deSantis' figure,
account for 37.1% of mankind's contribution of carbon dioxide emissions. Considering
that mankind accounts for less than 3% of the total emissions, with the other 97%
contributable to Mother Nature, then what we are really talking about is a
minute 1.1%. As he further explained, in order for the Kyoto Accord to take
effect, the countries ratifying it must account for at least 55% of carbon dioxide
emissions, or 1.7% of the earth's total natural/manmade carbon dioxide overall output,
something that would happen if Russia joins the parade. He doesn't explain
that most of those 97 nations won't be reducing their own carbon dioxide output,
so in the end we are back talking about a 1%, at best, reduction in carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere, a gas that is not a pollutant but a necessary component in the
production of oxygen. I don't think oxygen is a pollutant, but I could be wrong. |
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funds
from rich
to poor
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Meanwhile, such real polluters as Russia, India,
and China won't be reducing even the amount of carbon emissions but rather
will be increasing them while at the same time pocketing the huge amount of your
tax dollars that we will have to fork over as our part of the exercise. Instead of
worrying about whether to join the international community in this farce or, in Mario's
words, "George Bush's corporate
welfare", maybe we should be considering why we would
risk putting ourselves on welfare for a plan that would only accomplish the transfer
of funds from the industrialized world to nations that have not and will not contribute
one iota to a cleaner environment. |
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Ron
Thornton
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Retrun to Ensign
- Return to Saskatchewan
News
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| This page is a story posted on Ensign and/or Saskatchewan
News, both of which are daily web sites offering a variety of material from scenic
images, political commentary, information and news. These publications are the work
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Editor : Timothy W. Shire
Faster Than Light Communication
Box 1776, Tisdale, Saskatchewan, Canada, S0E 1T0
306 873 2004
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