Margaret Wente on Kyoto

Margaret Wente has a nice op-ed in the Toronto Globe & Mail today on Kyoto. According to Wente, Canada got snookered at the Kyoto negotiations....

In the mid-1990s, Paul Martin took an axe to program spending. No programs to administer means no jobs for bureaucrats. One exception was programs for the environment. So every corner of the bureaucracy tried to grab a piece of the Kyoto file. "They weren't bad people doing bad stuff," says Ms. Donnelly. "It was survival." Kyoto wasn't even a priority with environmentalists. But it was the only game in town, so they embraced it. Nobody was about to say the emperor had no clothes.

Meantime, the Liberal ministers, even those with the biggest stake in the Kyoto file, paid little attention. They figured the bureaucrats would sort it out.

"They didn't even read the 30-page Kyoto Protocol," says Ms. Donnelly. "They didn't even know enough to ask questions. They were under the impression that achieving Kyoto would be a slam-dunk."

It was only in December that the ugly truth finally dawned on Mr. Martin and his cabinet. Kyoto will require gigantic costs and massive regulatory intervention.

No matter how many times Mr. Martin commanded his hapless bureaucrats to go back and square the circle, they couldn't do it.

So remember: "Kyoto" is not a magic word meaning "we care." What it really means is: We're throwing billions at this thing, even though we have no idea what we're doing.