Hiding Under The Bed

Andrew Scheer says that his environmental policy is a work in progress. But it really is hard to know what his party is thinking. It changes gears frequently. Rick Smith writes:

Trying to follow the Conservative stance on climate change can give you whiplash.

After all, this is a party that voted unanimously against signing the Paris Climate Accord in 2016, only to turn around eight months later and vote fully in support of the Accord (with only one Tory member dissenting).  This new commitment didn’t last long, however, with Leader Andrew Scheer first stating that the party’s climate plan would be built around achieving the Paris targets and then retreating to the vaguely defined goal of achieving “meaningful targets.”

All we really know is what the Conservatives don't like:

We know taxing pollution is out, despite a long history of Conservative support for market pricing mechanisms. Technology now seems to be a big part of the Tory answer.  Scheer has not been terribly specific about what “clean technologies” he is thinking of when he talks about how Canada is a leader in climate technology that it should be exporting to the world.  It doesn’t seem likely that he is referring to electric vehicles or renewable energy, support for which have been slashed by his friends in the Ford and Kenney governments.

It would appear that they are putting their faith in Carbon Storage and Capture (CCS):

Scheer’s Environment and Climate Change Critic, Ed Fast, may have given us a hint of where the Conservatives are headed in praising carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.  Fast notes that despite the standard Conservative skepticism about governments picking “winners and losers” it could be useful for the government to put its thumb on the scale in favour of CCS, stating “we do want to encourage clean technology, especially in our oil and gas sector.”

CCS has long been favoured by the oil and gas industry as a handy way of continuing to rely on fossil fuels while addressing a growing public demand to get a grip on greenhouse gas emissions.  The problem is that there is little evidence it can actually be cost-effectively scaled up to deal with the scope of the problem.  Currently, the National Energy Board calculates that existing and proposed CCS systems worldwide would capture carbon equal to just 1% of current global emissions.  So the Tory’s magic bullet is unlikely to be any more effective than the Liberal carbon tax that Fast and Scheer contend is too low – and too economically harmful at higher levels — to effect real change.

You get the impression that Scheer would rather ignore the whole thing -- which, frankly, is what the Conservatives have been doing for years. They are hiding under the bed, hoping the bogeyman will go away.

Image: Jewish Public Media

Living In An Alternate Universe

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Yesterday, the provincial premiers met in Quebec City to map out a strategy to combat climate change. The federal government was invited to the conference but declined the invitation:

Tuesday's meeting ended with renewed calls for the federal government to show greater initiative in addressing the issue.

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard said the time for action is now, especially with an upcoming get-together of environment ministers leading up to an international conference on climate change in Paris in December.

"It has to be prepared, so we call upon the federal government right now to start working with us, first technically, then with the ministers, in order to work together in establishing our targets for Paris and the way we're going to present our situation, our plans in the future," Couillard told a closing news conference.

"There's no way it can be done in isolation. One order of government cannot ask the other to do the job. It has to be done together."

Yet, on that very same day, Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford claimed that his government had an "already exemplary record on environmental performance."

Tuesday was also the day that the Supreme Court found that Harperian legislation to impose mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes contravened the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Harperites continue to act as if the Charter didn't exist. In their anti terrorism legislation -- Bill  C-51 -- they specifically mandate courts to ignore the Charter. And, in another court, Senator Mike Duffy stands accused of 31 offences which the Harperites claim have no connection to them.

These folks live in an alternate universe. Asylums are full of such people. But, in Canada, we've given them to keys to the kingdom.

The Consequences Of His Inaction

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There are some who believe that the deal which the United States and China reached on greenhouse gas emissions will force Stephen Harper to act on climate change. But Jeffrey Simpson warns that such optimism is misplaced. To begin with, the Republican dominated congress will act immediately to nullify the agreement. And, of course, Harper is philosophically a Republican:

When a leader such as Mr. Harper spends the better part of a decade not even speaking about the issue, let alone the rest of what political leadership entails, there is almost no chance the general public will be alerted to its importance. This is especially true of the leader’s natural political followers.

Leadership means a willingness to spend political capital on an issue, and in Canada’s case, there is no such leadership at the top. That this absence would suddenly shift as a result of a China-U.S. understanding is improbable in the extreme.

There are several reasons for Mr. Harper's refusal to act:

First, Mr. Harper doesn’t like the issue of climate change. He avoids it wherever possible and looks distinctly uncomfortable when forced to discuss it. He considers it a political and economic loser.

Second, the core of his party doesn’t like the issue either, believing climate change to be unrelated to human activities, too expensive to worry about, or a plot by lefty enviros to nail: a) Alberta; b) jobs; and c) “hard-working taxpayers.” Canadians who want more action won’t be voting Conservative anyway.

Third, Mr. Harper dislikes being pressured. When it happens, he prefers to push back rather than yield. Call it stubbornness. Call it principled. It’s how he is. The idea that he would be pressured by a “deal” whose impact won’t be felt for decades belies everything we know about the man.

What some call stubborn others would call pig headed. As for principles, we've seen Mr. Harper shred his principles in the pursuit of power. If power depended on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, he would move.

But the Prime Minister calculated long ago that power lay in the other direction. He is quite content to let the planet suffer the consequences of his inaction.

The Turn Of The Screw

Yesterday, Barack Obama announced that the United States is moving to restrict the emissions of its greatest polluter, the coal industry. The objective is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal by 30% in the next sixteen years. Stephen Harper responded by saying that Canada already restricts emissions from coal. What he neglected to say, of course, is that coal accounts for only 11% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. The Canadian equivalent of coal is the tar sands.

Since he came to power, Mr. Harper has done everything he could to pave the way for bitumen -- and he has trashed those who advocated limiting tar sands emissions. Lawrence Martin writes:

Mr. Harper doesn’t seem to have changed his outlook much since 2008, when he responded to Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion’s plan for a “Green Shift” carbon tax. Mr. Harper called the plan a threat to national unity and said it would destroy everything his government had built. “It will actually screw everybody across the country,” he said.

When it comes to action on the environment, Canada stands alone:

On environment protection, Canada’s ranking is rock-bottom, according to Washington’s Center for Global Development – 27th out of the world’s wealthiest 27 countries.

Obama has been telling Harper for months that, if he wants to see the Keystone Pipeline cross American real estate, Canada will have to show a credible plan to protect the environment. Harper's response -- along with the other climate deniers in his party -- has been to do absolutely nothing.

Now the heat is on -- and Mr. Harper is beginning to feel the turn of the screw.

For The Birds

The irony is of epic proportions. The Jewish National Fund plans to put Stephen Harper's name on  a bird sanctuary. It shall be called The Stephen J. Harper Hula Valley Bird Sanctuary Visitor and Education Centre. Michael Harris writes that naming a bird sanctuary after Stephen Harper is like naming a kids' summer camp after Rob Ford. Consider what is happening in Northern Alberta:

Bloomberg Businessweek [reports] that by 2020 wastewater from the Canadian tar sands will cover 62,000 acres of Northern Alberta and possibly spread through the boreal forest ecosystem.

Big players like Syncrude are planning what are being described as “end-pit lakes”, thirty of them in total. If they are allowed to go ahead with their plans, Canada will have a new lake district.

The district will be full of what the oil industry calls "replica lakes:"

A replica lake starts as a dump of toxic slurry covered by freshwater to a depth of sixteen feet — the amount of water allegedly required to keep the bad stuff on the bottom.

Eventually, these poison lakes will “replicate” living lakes, complete with fish, frogs and mosquitoes. The exact number and location of eyes, fins and legs remains unknown. But life will return, or so Syncrude scientists say. Turns out there are naturally occurring microbes in that sludge that suck the poison right out of those pollutants. That’s right, the poison lakes will heal themselves.

Canada’s greatest living freshwater scientist, David Schindler, isn’t so sure. He told Bloomberg, “Nothing is going to grow in that soup of toxic elements except perhaps a few hydrosulfide bacteria.  All of the unforeseen consequences are being downplayed.” And, so, in Israel, at least, Stephen Harper is feted as a friend of the environment.

We now have proof positive that the man who was going to make government accountable, the man who was going to reform the Senate, the man who was going to bring moral clarity to government  is -- for the birds.

The "Primitives" Have Got It Right

In a recent article, Noam Chomsky asks the question we should all be asking: "Who will defend the earth?" The people who are desperately interested in the answer to that question are people we have traditionally thought of as "backward." But, Chomsky writes, they understand what is at stake:

That the Earth now desperately needs defense from impending environmental catastrophe is surely obvious to any rational and literate person. The different reactions to the crisis are a most remarkable feature of current history.

At the forefront of the defense of nature are those often called “primitive”: members of indigenous and tribal groups, like the First Nations in Canada or the Aborigines in Australia - the remnants of peoples who have survived the imperial onslaught. At the forefront of the assault on nature are those who call themselves the most advanced and civilized: the richest and most powerful nations.

And, the answer to that question is at the heart of the turmoil which presently roils in Turkey: 

The struggle to defend the commons takes many forms. In microcosm, it is taking place right now in Turkey’s Taksim Square, where brave men and women are protecting one of the last remnants of the commons of Istanbul from the wrecking ball of commercialization and gentrification and autocratic rule that is destroying this ancient treasure.

The defenders of Taksim Square are at the forefront of a worldwide struggle to preserve the global commons from the ravages of that same wrecking ball - a struggle in which we must all take part, with dedication and resolve, if there is to be any hope for decent human survival in a world that has no borders. It is our common possession, to defend or to destroy.

We have become obsessed with the notion of private property, while we have forgotten the concept of the public commons. And, if we refuse to accept the idea that we are all in this together, the planet will collapse. In fact, it is well on the way to collapse.

The so called advanced people are the real primitives.

The Investor Is King

If you wondered why the Harper government has gutted Canada's environmental legislation, Frances Russell  provides the answer:

The North American Free Trade Agreement was the first of a New World Order of trade agreements designed, to borrow the words of the Trilateral Commission in 1975, to repeal “an excess of democracy in the western world.” It set a precedent never before dreamed of, let alone achieved, in international trade: the right of private investors to sue nations. And not just for millions, but billions, robbing national treasuries of the means to address the social and economic needs of their citizens and, in many cases, pushing them back into extreme poverty.

The Harperites mission is to make the world safe for investors. What that means in practice is that they seek out and sign "trade agreements" which entrench investor rights through a system of investor dispute mechanisms. And a remarkably small number of people have been laughing all the way to the bank:

NAFTA and its growing ranks of copycats like the Canada-Europe Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership are about nothing less than entrenching de facto government by transnational corporations. So far, the corporations are winning. In the process, they’re not just enriching themselves but also a global network of fabulously wealthy lawyers and accountants busy impoverishing governments and their citizens to achieve maximum profits for the multinationals they represent.

The rapacious success — and excess — of these latter-day robber barons can be traced through statistics. The number of investor-state lawsuits has soared from 38 cases in 1996 to 450 in 2011. The amount of money involved has soared, too.

A report titled Profiting From Injustice has documented the extent of the corporate coup:

"(I)t has become clear that the arbitration industry has a vested interest in perpetuating a regime that prioritizes the rights of investors at the expense of democratically elected national governments and sovereign states,” the report’s authors state. “They have built a multimillion-dollar self-serving industry, dominated by a narrow exclusive elite of law firms and lawyers whose interconnectedness and multiple financial interests raise serious doubts about their commitment to deliver fair and independent judgments.”

Investment arbitrators have an inbred bias favouring corporations over states, encourage lawsuits against governments in crisis, promote investment arbitration as a necessary condition for attracting foreign investment and encourage governments to sign investment treaties that use language maximizing possibilities for litigation.

The Harperites are the courtiers of this investor-lawyer elite. And, when they leave government, they will be rewarded -- many times over. Unfortunately, we the plebeians will be left with the bill.

This entry is cross posted at Eradicating Ecocide.

Pay Now Or Pay Later

The devastation which Hurricane Sandy visited on the American east coast has generated a lot of attention. So did Hurricane Katrina. But neither storm appears to have spurred legislators into action. And, in Canada, inaction is the name of the game. Matt Horne writes that, when the opposition proposed a nine cents a litre tax on gasoline, John Baird rose in the house and claimed that the tax would kill Canadian families:

That nine cents per litre — less than a dollar a day for the average Canadian family — could be the signal that helps flip the tables in favour of clean energy and gives government the resources it needs to invest in that transition. Applied to all fossil fuel combustion, the equivalent of nine cents a litre would raise $20 billion a year in government revenues.

When the government cheerfully announced it was withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol last year, it did so under the pretence of helping Canada’s economy. This conclusion ignored the simple fact that no economy does well when it is ravaged by storms, droughts and other extreme weather events. Canada’s true economic interest lies in finding global solutions to global warming — not in turning our back on the rest of the world.

Instead of trumpeting unfettered expansion of oilsands pipelines and mines, we need an economic vision based on a clean energy future for this country. Instead of allowing dirty coal-fired power plants to pollute the atmosphere until the middle of the century, we need to rapidly shift to the cleaner alternatives available today. Instead of squabbling over transit investments, we have to find ways to mobilize the necessary capital that will give people more reasonable, affordable options to leave their cars at home.

Baird's reaction was not surprising. The oil industry owns the Conservative Party of Canada. And, if the governing party gets its way, Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy and their vengeful sisters will continue to kill all kinds of people.

One way or another, we're going to have to pay. The sooner we begin paying, the less the bill will be.

This entry is cross posted at Eradicating Ecocide.