U.S. no longer alone in rejection of Kyoto Protocol

Finally tipping its hat to economic reality, the Canadian government signaled it may drop out of the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. never signed the Kyoto Protocol and now Canada may join its club, together with Japan and Russia, and reject the Orwellian notion that people are somehow better off if government policies make them worse off.

Countries signed on to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and agreed to engage in a number of economic-growth inhibiting policies, such as carbon taxes, to reduce man-made carbon dioxide emissions. Europe is the farthest along with these economy-destroying policies but Canada was not far behind.

How did this happen? Well, Canadian Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien hopped on to the global warming bandwagon in 1997 to create a Save-Mother-Earth legacy for himself on his way out of office. Canadians caught on to this scam early though, so one of the legacies was the election of the opposition Conservative party in 2006 and the virtual decimation of the Liberal party in the 2011 election.
Now, with the conservatives in power, reality has come back into economic calculation. The warmer’s state of fear no longer scares people, and the politicians know it. As a result, the green subsidy machine has slowed down.

For Wyoming, the lesson is as government gets bigger, more powerful and takes more of your money, you are forced to pay for green and other schemes that waste resources and lower your standard of living. Even after these policies are rejected, the special interest groups they create linger on and continue to feed on your dime.

It’s time to return to the principles of limited government and personal freedom. We must take power back from the politicians and bureaucrats before the next bandwagon appears.