WTF Organization
I'm just doing a short entry this morning because it's on such a big topic, so please feel free to make up the length in my comments section.
An Indian company just bought Algoma Steel. An India Indian company, not a Native Canadian Indian company. Gawd forbid, say, Garden River Indian Reserve, just outside of Sault Ste. Marie should abandon its plan to showcase the Reserve as some sort of Heritage site/Tourist mecca, with real live people pretending to live in the olden days of hunting and trapping and moccasin sewing for the amazement of people who have only read about such things in history books - and get together with a bunch of other Canadian bands to buy Algoma Steel, instead, so its people can have a future to go with their past.
(I don't actually know how far this floated plan has come - the Garden River Human Zoo plan, as I think of it - I remember being home a few years ago and reading about it in the Sault Star, but I haven't followed-up on it since.)
In any case, back to the real world this morning as I was minding my own business, getting ready for work by applying lipstick and mascara (because my office skills really can't stand on their own), when my newspaper reading companion said, "An Indian company bought Algoma Steel."
To which my instant reply was, and I kid you not, this is what I said and this is what I would appreciate my commenters weighing in on: "So, an Indian company is going to own Algoma Steel, one of our polluting industries - AND we are, according to Kyoto and its (I'm sorry, everybody, but I've got to say this) cooked up carbon emissions credit trading scheme, going to have to buy credits to offset emissions of a company owned by India but operating here - in Canada BECAUSE it's owned by India but operating here - in Canada?!"
I'm sorry. But, Dear Reader, what kind of Global Village is this, again? Who is all this "Environment Saving" for, exactly? I mean, how is it that taxpayers here get stuck footing the bill for polluting - TWICE - just because we were so successful in our industrial development that now we offer all kinds of attractive industries for up and coming polluters to buy out from under us - you know, those emerging economic powerhouses like China and Indian that Western businessmen are so heavily involved in developing that, well, look around - that unbearable lightness of being? That's the absence of so many of our Western businessmen you're feeling because they're out and about doing business in emerging economic powerhouses. That's WHY they're emerging economic powerhouses - for those Western businessmen, anyway.
So, I have to ask - Did nobody stop to think that emerging economic powers like China and India would do exactly what they are doing now - buy up Western resources and companies and then get paid to pollute while we work in them, pay taxes - but they get to own everything and pocket all the profits - and then we have to pay them a polluting tax on top?
Or am I misunderstanding what is actually going to happen. Am I wrong? Does it not follow that if India owns Algoma Steel, and Canada is a polluting developed country that must buy carbon credits from some sort of World Bank (and I'm not even going to go there) - and India doesn't because it's a developing country, that well - HOW IS THAT ANYTHING OTHER THAN A DOUBLE HIT ON CANADIAN TAXPAYERS?! And by "CANADIAN TAXPAYERS", I mean the ones who keep their money here, not offshore.
So yeah - I don't mean rich Canadian taxpayers.
Look, I've long since accepted that Global Warming is real and here, but I've also long since accepted that Kyoto and Carbon Trading and all that jazz is a funny bit of business that will, once again, benefit the few - the same few - at the expense of the many. It'll be expensive, it just won't be expensive for rich people. It'll be a whopping new tax on the bulk of Canadian taxpayers - the middle-class.
Tell me, please. Am I way ahead of the curve, off the curve, did I miss the curve? Or do I have company? Does it have to be either/or in terms of accepting the scientific facts of Global Warming while rejecting the offered solution to it? Can I agree that Global Warming is a real and serious threat to the Earth without agreeing with Kyoto and Carbon Emissions Trading and the very obvious reality that together they are nothing but a mad money grab of the worst, most cynical kind by the very people who benefited last go-round from our natural resource exploitation?
Because something tells me the Global Village is a lot like the old Nation States, except with more opportunities for rich people to exploit the people who keep it all going 'round for them.
