Only two days before he recommended (successfully) to the Governor General that Parliament be dissolved to make way for the famed 1988 free trade election, Canada’s 18^th Prime Minister addressed the UN General Assembly in New York City. And in doing so, Brian Mulroney took his case for needed action by the Americans to combat the scourge of acid rain to this world body.“In a world where rivers and winds cannot be contained by laws or borders, it is clear that domestic actions by themselves are inadequate,” he said. “Canadians know all about this. Our economy, as well as our environment, is being damaged daily by acid rain. We have taken important internal measures to address the problem. We have urgently pressed our neighbour (the USA) to follow suit and to conclude a treaty with us that will reduce the environmental damage from this blight but stated amounts within specific time frames.”Just over two-years later, after his re-election with a majority mandate, Mulroney would sign the Canada-US Acid Rain Treaty with President George H.W. Bush. Many years after that, Mulroney would be hailed as Canada’s Greenest Prime Minister.[caption id="attachment_931297" align="alignleft" width="215"] Brian Mulroney at the UN General Assembly, with Stephen Lewis, Canada's Ambassador to the UN[/caption]Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.