I would like to thank the Prime Minister's office for bestowing on me an honour I regard quite highly: the first Gazette column after Canada's ratification of the Kyoto protocol.

Here are a few things I learned from a bit of research on Kyoto:

The temperatureof Earth's atmosphere has increased by 0.7 degrees centigrade since the industrial revolution. Alberta has the highest rate of greenhouse hgas emission of all the provinces; the Maritime provinces have the lowest. Australia and the United States have refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol. The U.S. produces 40 per cent of the industrialized world's greenhouse gas emissions. If we implement Kyoto, experts predict a "backlash" against Canada from Wall Street, a drop of between $40 billion and $75 million in the gross dmestic product, and a loss of 450,000 jobs.

There has been very strong objection to Kyoto in Canada. The most raucous of this seems to be coming from Alberta--Klein even called Kyoto, with characteristic eloquence, "goofy".

A large portion of Alberta's welath is derived from the gasoline industry. A large portion of greenhouse gases are alos derived from that industry. Incedentally, the Maritime provinces are not among the wealthiest areas in Canada. The U.S. produces a huge portion of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, and contorls a huge portion of the world's wealth. There is a pattern here.

The pattern is that greenhouse gas pollution can, in terms of dollar amounts, be very lucrative. The only complaint people have made against Kyoto is its price tage; I saw a heartstring-pulling feature int he news about families that lose their income because of Kyoto.

But, petroleum is called a "non-renewable resource". Did people who work in that industry not know that whent hey signed up? Do people really think that a "non-renewable resource" should give them unending paycheques? Did they not know that they were joining a team that is directly responsible for devastating ecological damage? Did they think that such damage would go eternally uncompensated?

Petroleum and the dirty wealth that lies therein will come to an end that has already begun. Who lost jobs when cars replaced and carriages? Who lost work antibiotics, the phonograph, the telepohne, the printing press, radio, the internet, and VCRs were invented?

It is unfortunate that cleaning up means career changes and higher bills to pay. But it is more unfortunate that we have done so much damage to the Earth for the sake of cheap transportation. Cheap gas was a chump deal, a rip-off, and now we are feeling the burn of it. The party is over.

The bright side is that, while the equipment that will bring us clean energy may be expensive, the enrgy it provides is dirt cheap. Compact fluorescent bulbs, for use in ordinary sockets, use 70 to 80 per cent less energy than incandescent bulbs. Modern home appliances and inventions like programmable home thermostats save substantial amounts of energy. One can imagine how cheap solar and wind energy is. It makes me wonder why labouring under the hot sun and fierce wind to dig oil out of the ground seemed like a good idea.

Everybody knows that the men at the top of the petroleum control-chain are grotesquely wealthy. I might suggest that very little actual harm would come to them if a substantial portion of their obese incomes was spread around a little to help the have-not families get by, and to help the world become a cleaner, healthier place. But if that happens, the Communists and hippies win, right?