ReeferMadness

Are you seriously comparing the major scientific organizations (all of which have endorsed the premise that global warming is happening and is human-caused) with a bunch of greedy thugs on Wall Street? Give me a break!! Climate science is a real science, based on provable theories. It's just extremely complex. Economics is at best a pseudo-science based on human behavior. If anyone ever figured it out, it would all change because everyone is using it to beat the system. There is no comparison.

We can't be absolutely sure of anything. Most of the people out there with PhD behind their names, however, seem to think that global warming is real and caused by humans. That's got to count for something. Regardless, I think the steps being advocated by global warming activists (pollute less, burn less fossil fuels) are good ideas in and of themselves.

The only people who benefit from drug prohibition are law-and-order freaks and organized crime. People talk as if laws against drugs make it harder to get them but I've never seen any objective evidence to back that up. The only way you're going to eliminate the drug trade is if you have a police state. I think that past Liberal administrations might have legalized some of the softer drugs like marijuana were it not for the country to our south. The trouble is that there would be a huge hue and cry from south of the border, probably followed by tighter border controls. This would bring endless media stories about the effects on trade. No politician is ever going to even appear to compromise economic issues for social ones, particularly controversial ones.

I find in general that the Greens policies are more clearly stated than other parties - probably because they don't have a lot to lose by alienating some segment or other. It seems to me that the Green Party is usurping the traditional NDP role by coming up with different ideas. I don't know the relevance of Soviet Central planning to Green policies but over the past 20 years, here are some events I've witnessed in the "efficient" free markets: Savings & Loan Scandal Japanese bubble of the early 90's Asian meltdown Bre-X Dot com boom (shortly followed by the dot com bust) Enron, World-Com and other crooked companies Now the current world-wide financial crisis In some cases, the actions of the free market were criminally asinine - in others they were just plain criminal. It's time to stop slamming governments and reform them to make them work better for us.