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Last week was hellish...only posted once! Along with not posting, I also was unable to read a single blog all week. My newsreader is probably backlogged unbelievably, but I wouldn't know because I haven't checked...

One thing that happened last week which I'd like to make everyone aware of is that the town of Shepherdstown...my home away from home...became the first municipality in West Virginia to sign on to the Kyoto Treaty. Here's the report:

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Shepherdstown has become the only municipality in coal-producing West Virginia to support a global greenhouse gas agreement. Town Council voted Tuesday to sign on to the U.S. Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement, which asks state and federal governments to uphold the standards of the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges 35 industrial nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

‘‘We feel it’s very important to try and meet the Kyoto protocols,’’ Shepherdstown Councilman Frank Salzano said Thursday.

‘‘We have broad support among the community and the council.’’

The United States and Australia are the only major industrialized countries to reject the Kyoto Protocol. As of Wednesday, 330 mayors across the country had signed on to the U.S. Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement.

The agreement commits local governments to meet or beat Kyoto Protocol targets in their own communities through urban forest reforestation, land-use policies aimed at curbing sprawl and other initiatives. It also states that local governments will continue to urge state and federal legislators to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels is the biggest of the greenhouse gases. West Virginia is the second largest coal producing state in the nation.

What they are going to regulate--aside from possibly the city sewage plant--I dont' know. There is no industry in Shepherdstown. No coal. No oil. No manufactoring. Nothing--unless of course they're finally going to tell China Kitchen that the smell of Chinese food at 9a.m. is not a good thing.

This is a prime example of government wasting time and diverting attention from the issues (which, in Shepherdstown means UNIVERSITY PARKING). Good grief.