So, what is Jeffrey Simpson really talking about???
Simple: Moral Superiority.
Nowhere in his column will one find even the slightest hint of an explanation of how sticking with the Kyoto crowd would actually solve a damn thing.
Rather, it's all about doing it because it's the right thing to do, while carefully avoiding any use of the word that best describes such action: "Symbolism".
"It’s said, for example, that since Canada “only” contributes 2 per cent of total emissions (while being among the largest per capita emitters), it should really do very little. Ponder that argument. Has it ever been seriously advanced – in war or peace – that Canada isn’t doing its part in world affairs? Did Canada say in two world wars, “Sorry, since we can’t be the decisive actor alone, we’ll take a pass”? Should Canada refuse to give foreign aid because its aid alone can’t eliminate poverty? Should Canada withdraw from a multitude of international institutions because it’s smaller than other member countries and thus can’t do much by itself?
To put the argument this way is to see how false it rings against our traditions of responsible international participation.
This is akin to the pernicious folly of the “ethical oil” argument now embraced by the Harper government (and the oil industry, of course) to justify doing little to reduce emissions from the oil in the tar sands.
In secular philosophy and organized religion, ethics has been about defining and pursuing the notion of the “good.” This “good” is usually set as an optimum, never attained but always kept as a goal. Ethics is not about claiming virtue because behaviour is better than the worst possible behaviour, but rather it’s measured against the nominal sense of the “good.”"
Here's the difference: Canada's involvement in those wars had nothing to do with symbolism. We fought against REAL tyranny that was murdering REAL people, and destroying REAL freedoms and rights. And our foreign aid went to fighting REAL poverty amongst REAL people suffering REAL horrific consequences.
There was nothing theoretical or contrived about any of it...you know, as is the case so blatantly with AGW.
Here's what Simpson's column, and basically every other similarly Liberal Left scribbling, goes out of its way to NOT mention...
The Kyoto targets of a 6% reduction relative to 1990 would have required Canadians to park every vehicle in the country, shut down every source of electricity not generated by hydro or nuclear fission, shut down every mode of transportation, every furnace in every home, our entire agricultural industry...and still not have achieved that target.
Which clearly is a preposterous notion.
So the only alternative left would have been to tax Canadians up their collective arseholes on virtually every aspect of their daily lives to raise kabillions of dollars to buy "carbon offset credits" in foreign countries. Or in other words, send kabillions of our dollars to foreign governments, such as Russia, China, and only God knows where else, so they could spend it all on...???...what? "Green" stuff? Right, which is the kind of inane fantasy only a leftist could believe.
Can you even begin to imagine the snickering going on around tables in foreign capitals by primarily socialist/communist/fascist leaders and bureaucrats as they gleefully toast the hordes of useful idiots in the west who demanded that their primarily democratic governments dump truckloads of primarily US dollars in their laps???
Oh, no, the usual suspects will say. "Carbon offset credits" would also be traded on international exchanges. You know, like the one in Europe in which Interpol discovered that, of the $7 billion worth swapping hands over its first couple of years of operation, no less than $5 billion worth vanished in a haze of presumably green smoke in one of the largest frauds in history.
Forget about the Chicago exchange that finally shut its doors because the markets arrived at a point where a carbon offset credit wasn't worth a plugged nickel...literally!
Why? Because who in hell actually knows what a "carbon offset credit" really is??? In fact, it's no more than a concept ( meaning, pretty much pulled out of somebody's ass ) that can't be seen or touched, that has no real intrinsic value, that is tracked on computer screens, that is traded in far off places nobody knows, by people nobody ever heard of. Cute, eh? the JP Morgans of the financial world spent fortunes preparing for this market. 3% in, and 3% out on billions worth of imaginary fluff mandated by governments sucking up to millions of voters scared shitless by environmentalist zealots relentlessly hammering at them with the all too predictable doom and gloom of the new religion of Anthropolitical Global Warming! All of it pumped up until hell won't have any more by an MSM crammed to the gills with guilt ridden Liberal Lefties whom reliably don't feel sufficiently important or worthy enough unless they're on some mission to save the human race from itself, and for the most part, owned by the same interests in far off ivory towers whom also are the principle players in financial markets...the same ones looking to do big business in trading carbon offset credits. Who the hell wouldn't want a piece of that action!!!
Which isn't entirely new...kindly drop a sheckle in the dish on your way out, thank you very much you evil and sinful, and otherwise insignificant, little person.
Hell, they've even got their "heresy" routine to go with it. You either accept "the truth" as they proclaim it, or you are pretty much a worthless "piece of shit" equivalent to whacked out holocaust deniers. In the glorious days of the supreme power of Vatican Inquisitions, a conviction of heresy generally ended in a very public burning at the stake, lest anyone else should get silly ideas about just exactly who is calling the shots. We're more civilized now: The AGW fundamentalists burn heretics on the stake of public opinion, with the MSM at their beck and call at every turn. Again for the very same reason, lest anyone get stupid ideas about defying their self-proclaimed mandate to save the human race from itself.
The sickening irony in all this is that back then, damn few people could read, nor had any education worth mentioning. So they, understandably, relied upon and trusted their leadership to look after their best interests.
Relatively speaking, we...especially in the western world...are educated up the ying yang. Yet nevertheless the vast majority still defer to others to do their own reading and learning for them, and thereby hand their personal power off to veritable strangers of whom they don't know a damn thing about. Least of all what it is that motivates their decrees from on high...which also hasn't changed much: Money, and power over the ignorant masses.
And so we have Durban conferences that, more than anything else, are about scheming ways to suck no less than $100 billion per year out of the most modern and successful civilizations on the planet.
Is climate change real? Of course it is! There was never, ever a time in the multi-billion year history of this planet when climate was not changing. And there's not one single GD thing anyone can do about it, either!
Except learn to deal with it.
You don't deal with it by dragging billions of people into yet more poverty.
You don't deal with it by crushing hope for better lives and opportunity.
You don't deal with it by herding the masses like so many sheep with fear and threats.
You don't deal with it with ideological/fundamentalist contrivances.
You don't deal with it with gross exaggeration, deliberate manipulation of the facts, misrepresentation of the truth, and just out and out filthy lies!
And you certainly don't deal with it with unfettered zealotry and bigotry!
The one thing that pisses off the usual suspects in all of this is that people like me have the audacity and gall to question their authority, their self-esteemed holiness, and their idiotic quasi-socialist/communist ideological balderdash.
What is going on with all this AGW crap has nothing whatsoever to do with dealing with climate change.
No, all this AGW crap is nothing more or less than the usual suspects figuring out ways to EXPLOIT climate change to their own ends. PERIOD, END OF STORY!
Yep, that old adage is still all too sadly evident: The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
