October 2002
It now seems clear that Prime Minister Jean Chretien, in a last-ditch effort at some sort of legacy, is prepared to send this country spiraling into economic uncertainty with his pledge to ratify the Kyoto accord.

At the heart of Kyoto is a global initiative to reduce carbon dioxide, the agent eco-scientists keep telling us is the number-one ingredient in greenhouse gas emissions, which leads to global warming and causes mass floods, drought, and a bunch of other natural disasters that make for great Hollywood flicks. These doom-and-gloom predictions — like most of what you see on the big screen — is pure make-believe. But we’ll get to that later.

The first issue is how Kyoto would affect the economy. Big business has said that Kyoto, through what is known as carbon penalties, would mean 100- to 200-per-cent higher energy prices for everything from coal to diesel. To make matters worse, the United States, our largest trading partner, will not ratify the accord. If Canada goes it alone, the increased costs and regulation may drive away investment and force manufacturers to pack it up.

There is no evidence that reducing human-produced CO2 would have any effect on climate change — at the very least no one knows for sure. For goodness sake, Environment Canada has a 60/40 shot at predicting whether we’ll need raincoats or sun block tomorrow. Do they really know what it’ll be like in a hundred years? It’s debatable whether Canada can even reach the targets the accord imposes (six percent less GHG than 1990 levels). Since today we produce 20 percent more GHG than we did in 1990, Canada’s target is a 26-per-cent reduction. As one columnist put it: we could remove every plane, train, truck, and car in Canada and still not reach those targets by the mandated 2012 deadline.

The truth is, global warming is a natural occurrence. The earth endured cycles of hot and cold, floods and drought long before Henry Ford fired up his Model T or Madonna unleashed her first can of hairspray into the ozone.

Last year I met Dr. Tim Ball, a scientist and expert on climate change from Victoria, B.C. Just 20 short years ago, Dr. Ball says, the great paranoia among scientists was another ice age, not global warming. Now environmentalists tell us the ice caps are melting and floods will surely follow, despite the fact water expands in volume when frozen, and as a liquid, levels would actually decrease, he says.

Has the world warmed up since the16th century? Yes it has, Dr. Ball says. But it has to do with natural variability, not human-induced CO2. In fact, since 1940, through the continuing industrial revolution around the globe and the height of human-produced CO2, temperatures have dropped compared to the last few centuries, a time when the term “horsepower” meant just that.

Moreover, the Kyoto measurements of CO2 levels in the atmosphere include the 50 percent that is retained by trees and plants, which, by the way, would suffer with less global CO2. That’s the irony of the whole situation. David Suzuki and Co. want to save the green earth by taking away it’s primary source of living.

I’m not anti-environment. And I’ll make sacrifices if it means a better future for my children. But if we’re going to make the economy expendable, I had better hear the truth, and right now there isn’t enough concrete evidence to convince me the world is in danger, or if it was, that Kyoto is what’s going to save it.

Dr. Ball isn’t alone. But we never hear from him or the thousands of others with similar theories because, let’s face it, “the world is going to end unless we do something,” is a headline with more emotional impact. Politicians like Chretien buy it because they get to say they helped save the world. Until nature shifts and it becomes apparent to even the doomsayers the earth really isn’t going down in a heap of flames.