KYOTO, HUMOUR AND FLUORIDE

I admit it, I enjoy dreaming up the titles for my postings. The "Humour" part relates to a political cartoon in today's K-W Record. It shows federal Environment Minister Peter Kent receiving a stocking full of coal on Christmas morning. His response is a joyous "YIPPEE". Our federal Environment Minister is being portrayed as an environmental neandrathal and he's proud of it.

The "Fluoride" part of the headline refers to today's article in the K-W Record titled "After referendum, fluoride battle continues in court". This article has me a little bit stumped. In one sense I'm biased in that I supported the removal of fluoride from our drinking water hence I supported the position of Robert Fleming while opposing Dr. Harry Hoedino and Dr. Ira Kirshen. I attended a couple of the fluoride debates and combined with some research of my own I was very pleased with the referendum results. That being said I'm not sure of the benefit of pursuing the two Doctors in court now for alleged election financing violations.

The third item in my above headline deals with Kyoto. Thomas Walkom of the K-W Record has an Opinion piece in which he takes the federal Conservatives to task for walking away from Kyoto. It's one thing to complain and criticize a less than perfect treaty. Really how many multinational treaties sucessfully cover all the issues and problems? The best we hope for is a general framework and some major principles to be agreed upon and followed by the signatories. Mr. Walkom rightly points out that Canada has done no one any good by essentially kicking sand in the face of the rest of the world. No country is pristine and no country is blameless but Canada's outright rejection of the Kyoto treaty is wrong. My take is that politically the Conservatives are once again courting the United Staes who never signed on in the first place. Two wrongs do not make a right.