On the issue of science, to say that organizations such as NASA and the Pentagon, for example, which last April issued....
A study was leaked from the Pentagon saying that climate change was, in its eyes, a threat far worse than terrorism for U.S. global security. To say that the Hadley Centre, Environment Canada, and the 122 countries that have ratified Kyoto are simply suffering from some form of mass illusion is a bit of a stretch.
In terms of living in a cave, I'm not particularly fond of it myself. You may be familiar with Scandinavian countries, which have a standard of living very similar to our own. They live in a cold climate. They have heavy industries like we do--Norway, and countries as such--and they basically consume a third of the energy we do. So it's not about living in caves; it's about being efficient. Frankly, being efficient would not only be good for the economy, but it would be good for the environment at the same time.
You will probably be reassured to know that I am a social scientist. I have published a number of articles in peer-reviewed magazines on the issue of climate change, and as Morag pointed out earlier, the international scientific consensus around climate change is there. Yes, some people still dispute it, but the overall majority of scientists who are working on the issue are saying that it's happening.
The way IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, basically does its work is by doing an international scientific review of the literature that looks at climate change. I don't have the numbers for the 2001 assessment report, but for the 1995 assessment report, they reviewed 20,000 scientific papers dealing with climate change, and that's how they were able to come to the conclusions that they did in 1995, and the conclusions in 2001.
I don't think any of us have argued that CO2 is a poisonous gas, although a number of legislatures around the world, including Quebec, are saying that CO2 should be considered a pollutant. If you look at even the classical definition of what a pollutant does to the environment, then from that perspective it can be described as a pollutant. No one is saying it's a poisonous gas, obviously.
I would agree with you that the Kyoto implementation plan should focus on developing technologies and implementing them in Canada rather than buying credits abroad. That said, I think it has to be recognized that because of the time we've wasted over the past few years, we will have to buy some credits internationally, and we need to make sure these are for valid projects--and there are valid projects out there in which we can invest. Canadian companies are investing abroad every day of the year, and we should make sure that the investments are for very valid projects.