On Marginal Differences:

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper has finally admitted that the ground rushes up at one when he stated that Canadians would have to get used to high gasoline prices. He did sidestep the question of whether he would implement his 2004 campaign pledge of eliminating the GST on that segment of gasoline over 85 cents a litre and upon federal and provincial excise taxes, by saying that his GST plan would make, "A marginal difference," To consumers.

Marginal differences do add up. People, especially those holding a Masters of Economics, know that a florescent lightbulb here, a meal at home, instead of out, there, these are the things that make big changes, little by little. And furthermore every marginal benefit forgone is a marginal loss. Which is what makes the government's action on energy supply so very worrisome indeed. I am at this point unconcerned about the science of climate change.

Why? Simply put, most climatologists state that we have already passed the threshold for significant alterations in the planet's weather patterns. Either they are rgith, or they are wrong, we shall know soon enough. But whether or not we are to have haywire weather, everyday that the Hon. Rona Ambrose, Minister of the Envrionment, sits on the alternative energy file and refuses to make major investments in wind, solar, geothermal, and other alternative forms of free energy, the more ground that this nation loses in the emerging lucrative market of emerging energy.

We won't keep much of the nation employed in labs developing these techologies, sadly enough, but we will keep them employed building windmills, refining wastes into bio-gas and bio-diesel (Though to be precise the diesel we use right now is from biological sources, we just had the planet process it instead of a refinery.) To turn canola oil into diesel and to burn the diesel to harvest more canola is a carbon neutral process. Canadians, on left and right, must stop being so superficial about the economics of the environment. An economically viable system should not be in the practice of drawing down it's capital yet we do that to the tune of millions of barrels of oil a day. Every day that we fail to invest fully in the development of these existing technologies costs us far more than will be gained in terms of economies from the private sector. That our Prime Minister, a master's economist, can't realise that simple fact, and myself, a line cook, can says more about the dysfunctionality of our political system than a tenth of a billion dollars in graft ever will.