Toxic change targets Alberta and lets Ontario go free

Feds cloud real plan
Toxic change targets Alberta and lets Ontario go free
By Ezra Levant

Carbon dioxide is a colourless, odourless, harmless gas.

Actually it's not just harmless -- it's necessary for life on Earth, as all green plants require it for photosynthesis.

But on July 16, the federal government announced its intention to classify carbon dioxide as a "toxic chemical" under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

According to the Act, a toxic chemical is defined as "an immediate or long-term harmful effect on the environment," or "a danger to the environment on which life depends" or "a danger in Canada to human life or health". To call carbon dioxide any of these things is to lie. Carbon dioxide is essential not only to plant life, but it's the gas that humans -- and animals -- exhale when we breathe.

Carbon dioxide is not a toxic chemical in science or in common sense, so what's going on? In the same official notice, the explanation was provided: It's the way Ottawa plans to get jurisdiction over the oil patch to implement their Kyoto taxes.

The Kyoto Protocol is a dead letter. Most of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases are simply exempt from the treaty, including China, India, Brazil and OPEC. The treaty itself was rigged to give Europe a mulligan -- Europe got credit for East Germany shutting down its Soviet-era factories and the U.K. moving away from coal, even though both of those changes happened in the 1980s, a decade before the treaty was signed. The few countries who signed the treaty and are bound by it -- like Japan and the U.K. -- have admitted there is no way they can meet the treaty's requirements, so they're simply not going to try.

After all, the treaty has no enforcement mechanism.

But the real point of Kyoto -- UN and European bureaucrats designing a treaty to hobble the U.S. economy -- has been moot for years, ever since the U.S. Senate voted unanimously it would not implement Kyoto if it hurt the economy.

So the treaty is in a shambles, and its chief architect, Canada's Maurice Strong, has resigned in disgrace from the UN after his company, Cordex Petroleum Inc., received $1 million from Saddam Hussein. (Maurice Strong's protege, Prime Minister Paul Martin, is also an owner of Cordex.)

The most telling thing about the July 16 notice is it doesn't apply to Ontario's massive auto industry, which is exempt. But page after page goes into detail about how Alberta will be targeted, with fines of up to $200-million per megaton of carbon dioxide.

Question: Why is carbon dioxide considered toxic, and subject to a $200-million/megaton fine when it comes from Alberta, but harmless and untaxed when it comes from Toronto?

The Kyoto Protocol isn't about fighting pollution -- carbon dioxide isn't a pollutant. It's not about stopping global warming, either -- the Kyoto Protocol's own scientific panel predicts even if every country in the world were to fully implement the treaty, it would only make 0.2C difference by the year 2100. That's less than the natural annual variation of the world's climate.

There's no scientific or diplomatic reason to proceed with this treaty. But it's not about science or diplomacy.

This is just what it looks like: An excuse to tax Alberta. Too bad Ralph Klein has retired on the job. Too bad the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is more interested in lobbying Ottawa than fighting it.

Levant is publisher of the Western Standard