Jason Kenny has coined a new phrase and is milking it for all its worth. The enemy, Kenny declares, is "the green left." The reason for his bombast, Michael Harris writes, is that Kenny has been out toried by Rachel Notley:
Almost as soon as she rocked the nation by winning a majority government, Rachel Notley underwent a political sea change.
She quickly morphed into someone the president of Suncor could take to the prom.
In fact, she was as tar sands-friendly as Stephen Harper, and much more successful than he was in pressing the dubious cause of this resource.
It was Notley, not the late Jim Prentice or Harper, who actually got pipeline approvals.
Conservatives always need a bogeyman. But it can't be Notley. So, like Stephen Harper before him, Kenny has declared war on the environmental movement:
Kenney’s recent speech to 3,000 party members was full of the fire and brimstone, bravado and bullshit that this politician and his former party have come to stand for on the environment file.
At the crack of doom, the Jason Kenneys of the world will be shilling for more tar sands development, while tarring and feathering anyone who says otherwise. But one thing they won’t be talking about is how to replace lost revenue from ditching the carbon tax.
And he's doing this as the tar sands become economically unsustainable:
Kenney is working up a rhetorical sweat beating a dead horse. Governments, including Ottawa, keep saying profits from the energy industry are what builds Canada’s schools and hospitals.
Earth scientist David Hughes tells a different story as reported in The Tyee.
Canada’s fossil fuels are being dumped at low prices, leaving “minimal and declining” revenues for government. Royalties from hydrocarbon production have “plummeted” 63 per cent since 2000. That drop has been matched by a 50 per cent decline in corporate taxes collected by government on drilling and refining activity.
That's why banks like "BNP Paribas and ING, as well as Sweden’s largest pension fund, AP7. . . have pulled the plug on further tar sands financing. And pressure is mounting on American banks JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo to do the same."
Notley and Justin Trudeau are facing the same future. But Kenny is a different breed. His nose, Harris writes, is "in his navel."
Image: The Huffington Post
6 comments:
Although by no means alone, Kenney most obviously represents that breed of politician who seeks high office, not for the betterment of the country or province, but for the advancement of his own venal ambitions. His shrill rhetoric demonizing anything connected with the environment makes that plain for all who have eyes to see and ears to hear, Owen. Unfortunately, people like him also knows there is a ready audience for his poison.
It's a case of birds of a feather, Lorne. Unfortunately, their nest is pretty crowded.
Had a dream last night. When I awoke all I could recall was that it had something to do with the Civil War. Then I remembered it had something to do with the abolitionist movement, John Brown and Harpers Ferry.
Eventually I realized I was imagining America's abolitionist movement as a precursor to today's environmental movement.
Brown, along with six black men, seized the arsenal at Harpers Ferry hoping to commandeer weapons to launch a slave rebellion across the south. It was none other than Robert E. Lee, then a colonel in the US Army who put down Brown's insurrection.
Given what we know, what science has - through experimentation, observation and analysis - discovered, the similarities between 19th century slavers and the 21st century fossil fuelers and their political minions can be made out, not precisely of course, but with enough clarity to be apparent. Both pursue/d wealth at the expense of others. In the south it was slavery, the deprivation of liberty, the denial of humanity and incredible brutality. In 21st century Canada the fossil fuelers pursue wealth at the expense of others, particularly future generations that may have little to no chance of a secure and enjoyable life because of our wanton selfishness. What gives anyone the right to do that to someone else?
I still find it jarring when I see the video clips of Trudeau preaching that "No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there." He delivered that remark to an energy conference in Houston where no one was going to challenge "why not?" I suppose it's coincidental that he should deliver that remark in the deep south.
Yet, with that remark, Trudeau put Canadians, and especially the Liberal rank and file, that henceforth the Liberal government would be dressed in grey, not blue. These things, be it slavery or bitumen, have a way of making you choose.
There are some issues, Mound, where you can't split the difference. That old union song, "Which Side Are You On?" asks the fundmental question. Brown knew that slavery was such a question -- that a nation could not live "half free." The future of the planet cannot be split down the middle.
.. I suspect Justin can stickhandle & skate
past a slab of meatloaf named Scheer
I certainly hope so for Canada'as sake
but .. that will probably be it
Then all bets will be off..
Jagmeet Singh is nowhere ville
mebbe Rhona whill make a comeback
Maybe Michael Chong will form his own party
(a good thing in my views)
But reality suggests we are
extremely short of exemplars in politics
and public service
Unfortunately, Sal, the idea of public service -- and the nobility of public service -- has become a quaint notion from what seems to be a long ago past.
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