ladies and gentlemen, the prime minister of canada: kevin costner : Feschuk on the Famous : Macleans.ca Blog Central

Soon the Earth shall be a sultry cauldron of ocean and swamp. It is our task to make certain that post-humanoid existence in the exciting and moist Canada of tomorrow is every bit as awesome as it was in Waterworld, although we could probably do without the tacked-on romantic subplot.

Now as I address you today, I suspect some of you out there are wondering to yourselves: hey, when we elected Stephen Harper to be Prime Minister, did he have that dorsal fin?

No, I didn’t! Like most Canadians, I was a land dweller at the time – a “landie.” But the bright minds down at the National Research Council have helped me spur the pokey pace of evolution – I mean, creation – and now, presto, I’ve got ol’ finny here. I’m ready for whatever environmental toll comes due for mankind’s hubris. Your move, polar ice caps.

New Zealand passes climate change law whose costs are unknown | Top News

Wellington - The New Zealand Parliament on Thursday passed a law designed to combat global warming that was expected to raise the cost of just about everything and nobody knows by how much.

The law establishing a trading scheme that puts a price on emissions of greenhouse gases is bitterly opposed by most of New Zealand's business sectors, especially farmers, whose methane-belching animals are responsible for nearly half the country's emissions.

Along with New Zealand's small but significant steel and aluminium producers, the farmers said the cost of the law would put them at a disadvantage against their international competitors, whose governments are not in so much of a hurry to fight climate change.

But Prime Minister Helen Clark - who sees the emissions-trading scheme as the defining act of her 9-year-old Labour Party-led administration, which opinion polls indicated is doomed to defeat at the election she must call by mid-November - was defiant to the last.

Whatever the price, the alternative of doing nothing would cost New Zealand more in the long run, she argued.