More idiocy from the Greens

From The Star

Greens' climate plan sees 12-cent tax at the pump
Carbon toll is to avert climate "catastrophe", says May

OTTAWA–The Green party wants Canadian drivers to pay an extra 12 cents a litre at the gas pumps as the price of averting environmental "catastrophe."

Leader Elizabeth May is boasting that her party is the only one politically brave enough to call for carbon taxes that would discourage automobile use and finance other tax cuts that would allow consumers to make smarter environmental choices.

"Right now, the Green Party of Canada is the only Canadian political party prepared to state this obvious reality," May said yesterday. "We will use those carbon taxes to reduce taxes elsewhere."

May rolled out her party's environmental plan yesterday in part to coincide with the G-8 meeting starting today in Germany, where Canada's action on this issue – or lack of it – is a major story.

The Green leader had harsh words for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his announced intentions to be a "bridge" between countries that have signed on to the Kyoto air quality accord and the United States, which hasn't.

"If we stop being with the rest of the world and start siding with George Bush, we are global saboteurs and that's what Mr. Harper is doing right now in Germany," May said.

The environmental challenge is similar to the space race about 50 years ago in which then-president John F. Kennedy said the United States would put a man on the moon, May said.

"He couldn't prove it when he said it. He could mobilize the resources, fix the political will, and engage the public's spirit and imagination in a bold, collective venture," she said. "Surely we can do the same thing for purposes of survival."

I’ve seen this silly comparison so many times before. It’s really getting old.

“If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we……cure cancer?”

..find a cure for AIDS?”

...stop hurricanes?”

...keep earthquakes from happening?”

...eliminate world hunger?”

...eliminate poverty and ignorance?”

and now

...stop global warming?”

So all we need to do is throw a bunch of money and engineers at any problem and it will magically be solved. Well, that actually can work if you already know the solution to the problem. We had all the science needed to put a man on the moon by the 19^th century. The equations were all known and solved. The “space race” in the 1960s was just a matter of developing the technology needed to implement the solutions. The Apollo 13 astronauts themselves, when asked by Mission Control who was driving replied, “Isaac Newton is in the driver’s seat.” However, none of these other systems are well understood. We don’t know all the science involved in climate, let alone how to “fix” it or if it even needs to be fixed. And I might remind Ms. May that one country’s climate “catastrophe” is usually another’s windfall. Why should only Westerners get to decide what the entire earth's climate should be?