The "newly-launched environment organization" NRSP [6] has issued a press release [7] praising the Conservative government's new Clean Air Act for ignoring Kyoto and for failing to establish a cap on CO2 emissions.

But the NRSP still found a way to be critical. For example, it expressed disappointment that the feds are alleging even half-hearted efforts to address CO2 in the atmosphere.

"CO(2), the greenhouse gas of concern in most climate control schemes, is almost certainly not a significant driver of global climate change," said geology professor Ian Clark of Ottawa University, an environmentalist with stunning disregard for the environment. Clark, a scientific advisor for the NRSP, added, "Recent research points to natural factors, such as changes in the output of the Sun, as being the most significant drivers" - a statement that is so out-of-step with serious science that it would be laughable were it not so potentially toxic to the political discussion.

NRSP Executive Director Tom Harris launches a further argument against government regulation by saying, "Besides the hard caps that already exist on emissions for many industries, current provincial standards are generally working well. With some exceptions, pollution levels across Canada have been dropping for the past three decades and the establishment of further emission standards should be set at the most local level possible, not nationally."

That argument, if I understand it correctly, is:

1. that we should abandon government regulation because it has been so successful in the past; and

2. that any regulation that does occur should be limited to levels of government that are powerless to affect companies like Syncrude or ExxonMobile, whose resources and reach are multinational in scope.

As we have said before, NRSP: Not Really Serious People.