Pretend you’re a paper company with mills in Maine, New York and Georgia. Thanks to a bill supported by Sen. Betheda Edmonds, D-Freeport, Maine companies will have to reduce pollution emissions to 1990 levels.

This will require huge investments in pollution controls and additional cost for environmentally friendly fuel options, like solar, wind, etcetera.

As president of this paper company your choice is clear: shut your plant down in Maine and move your equipment to another state where you won’t have to incur any of these additional expenses, or stay in Maine and eventually go bankrupt because you can’t compete in the world market.

While ex-President Clinton lacked the courage to send the Kyoto treaty to the Senate for ratification (knowing of its certain death), our Sen. Edmonds thinks we should lead the way.

I believe one of the reasons President Bush chose to mothball the Kyoto treaty was because 136 other countries were exempt from having to do a thing. China and Brazil were two of those countries. Don’t they have enough of our jobs?

By the way, according to the Heartland Institute in Chicago, this is only going to cost each Maine household $6,032 per year, which is almost 17 percent of the average income in Maine.

Mark Cyr, Oxford