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Edmonton - Tuesday, November 26, 2002 - by: Ron Thornton
 

CO2

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.

 

 

concerns

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.

 

 

devastating

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.
   

carbon
dioxide
not a
pollutant

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.

 

 

funds
from rich
to poor

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.
   

 

Ron Thornton

   

   

 

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