The most dangerous men in the world

George W. Bush is the most dangerous man in the world. Not because of his foreign policy, although God knows that puts enough people in danger, but because of his cavalier attitude toward climate change. Climate change is the overwhelming issue; if we don't deal with it, no other issues will matter. And that means the country that produces 25 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions must be a leader. In fact, it isn't even a follower. The Bush administration backed out of the Kyoto Protocol, the first small international step to reducing the world's pollution.

And now the Harper administration, even though it insists it will work within the Protocol, is taking an axe to environmental spending. According to planning documents obtained by the Globe and Mail, the Conservatives plan on chopping Environment Canada's programs by 80 per cent and cutting the climate change budgets of other departments by 40 per cent. Apparently, they even want to claw back the $260 million we had pledged to the United Nations' climate change programs. The PM insists they aren't going to slash programs, just "wind up programs that don't get results and move things toward a program that is focused not just on spending money, but also achieving some objectives." Whatever that means. No program is apparent and the environment isn't included in the famous five priorities.

Even though we pollute significantly less than the United States because of our smaller population, we still pollute well beyond our share of the world's population. And, thanks to solid efforts by a number of states, The U.S. has done a better job overall of reducing emissions than we have. So, if our Prime Minister plans on adopting the same cavalier attitude toward climate change as the President, he will be well qualified to join the most dangerous man club, a fraternity we seriously can't afford.