If there is one thing which has consistently angered Liberals over the years - and sparked their just-below-the-surface disregard of Americans - it is when leading U.S. political figures make public comments about Canadian domestic policy.

Except, it seems, when it's an American loudmouth saying something they agree with.

Which brings us, of course, to former U.S. vicepresident Al Gore - currently the world's most successful and self-interest global warming shill (who else can make millions by selling carbon credits to his own company and still be idolized?).

Gore, you may know, was hanging around last weekend with our own homegrown environmental fearmonger, David Suzuki, long enough to pronounce that Environment Minister John Baird's new green plan is a "complete and total fraud ... designed to mislead the Canadian people."

Liberal Leader(less) Stephane Dion, who could be counted on to spew anti-American venom if, let's say, a Republican criticized our resolve in fighting terrorism, instead appeared to welcome Gore's contribution to the green debate.

"I hope the indignation from Canadians and the international community will be enough to get government to (fix) its plan," Dion told the National Post. "The reaction of Mr. Gore will be a reaction that will be very frequent, unfortunately."

There is so much hypocrisy and political doublespeak in all of this it is difficult to know where to begin.

We could begin, for example, by pointing out that Dion, for all his talk about the environment and Kyoto during his years as environment minister - and even more years of Liberals running the government - did nothing about it. Nada.

Or we could begin by pointing out that Gore - assuming he actually read Baird's proposals - is certainly someone who would recognize a "fraud" and an attempt to "mislead" the public when he sees it.

After all, Gore's much-heralded propaganda film is chalk-full of fraudulent prognostications and misleading pictures. Like the polar bears appearing to be stuck on a small bit of ice in the Arctic, for example.

The man who actually took that picture has since admitted that there was lots of ice not far from the little chunks - and polar bears are, let us recall, terrific swimmers.

They weren't in any danger at all, yet Gore's treatment would have you believe they are. (In fact, despite the propaganda, there are about five times as many polar bears in the world today than there were in the 1950s. And that, dear hearts, is a fact. You can look it up.)

There are countless other examples - particularly his fearmongering statistics, wildly exaggerated, predicting horrendous flooding and major storms - but let's just say that Gore is hardly in a position to lecture anybody on conning the public. (Although, unlike most people, he gets paids tens of thousands of dollars for showing up with his dog and pony show.) Lest you think your correspondent here is shilling for Baird and the Tory green plan, that too is absurd.

Regular readers will know that this writer ideologically leans sharply right-of-center - as does Baird, or at least he did when he was in the Mike Harris cabinet - but any minister who thinks it is good policy to make criminals out of Canadians who want to use the "wrong" light bulbs doesn't really understand conservative ideology. Clearly Baird and - sadly - Harper, don't appear to understand it either. But we digress.

I don't like Baird's green plan either.

But only because it's playing into the hands of the green activists who would have you believe that the same people who can't accurately predict tomorrow's weather can - by using the same computer models - tell us what the weather will be doing 25 and 50 years from now.

Think about that.

Three decades ago these same people were warning us about "global cooling." Then it was acid rain which was going to end life as we knew it. And don't forget that deadly hole in the ozone layer. And so on.

This is not to suggest there aren't some legitimate reasons to worry about the environment. But we should keep in mind that the air and the water is generally cleaner today than it was 20 or 30 years ago, one of the reasons - certainly not the only one - that people are living longer these days.

When the Tories were in opposition, they recognized the environmental fearmongering for what it was, but now that they're in government they've lost their nerve - and their intellectual honesty - and are trying to bring in a plan which will a)-do virtually nothing to change the amount of greenhouse gases and b)- cost us all a lot of money which could be better spent on a real problem.

In short: A pox on all their houses.