The Law Of Unintended Consequences

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On the environment, Stephen Harper's record is appalling. Rick Smith summarizes the damage he has done:

The Fisheries Act no longer protects most fish.

The Navigable Waters Protection Act no longer protects most lakes and rivers.

The federal Environmental Assessment Act was repealed in its entirety and replaced with a law so cursory it might as well have been drafted on a cocktail napkin.

Canada remains the only country in the world that signed the Kyoto agreement on carbon pollution, only to withdraw from the treaty.

Even the impressive environmental achievements of previous Conservative governments have been dismantled, such as the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. 

But ordering the audits of environmental charities may be the tipping point. And Smith speaks from experience:

I can tell you from personal experience (because I ran one of the country’s major environmental organizations for nearly 10 years) that, to a one, Canada’s environmental charities have always been extremely serious about complying with the letter and the spirit of CRA charitable rules. To have that sincere attempt thrown in its face by a tax agency that clearly isn’t playing straight has galvanized the environmental community in a way it never has been before.

Harper's attacks on his enemies have a way of boomeranging on him. And Smith believes that is precisely what is happening. Harper could well become a victim of his own war:

Of course it’s true that the obvious environmental impact of the Harper years will be measured in increased levels of pollution and real damage to precious land and waters. The less obvious and possibly longer lasting impact will be the creation of a country energized to decisively break with the failed environmental policies of the past in favour of a better future for us all.

It would be more than fitting if the prime minister sealed his own fate through the law of unintended consequences.

Near The Bottom

The Conference Board of Canada -- not a left leaning think tank -- has released a report on Canada's environmental health. The news is not good:

The study ranks Canada 15th out of 17 developed nations on environmental performance, ahead of only The United States and last place Australia.

The bottom three are also the largest nations surveyed in terms of land mass and all depend on natural resources for a large part of their economic output.

And the Harper government's push to make Canada an "energy superpower" is doing nothing to improve our environmental well being:

On per capita greenhouse gas emissions, Canada ranks 15th. The study notes that despite pledges to reduce emissions, Canada has not seen much improvement on a per capita basis. The report lays the blame at the door of Canada's exports of oil and natural gas.

On energy intensity, a measure of the ratio between the amount of energy used and gross domestic produce, Canada ranks dead last. That said, Canada's large size and cold climate make it difficult to keep the intensity of energy use down. Even so, Canada has reduced the energy intensity 39 per cent since 1971. Over the same period, the U.S. managed a reduction of 54 per cent. 

It should come as no surprise, then, that:

Canada produces more garbage per person than any other nation in the study and the vast majority of it ends up in landfills or incinerators. Canada produces more than twice as much garbage per capita than Japan, the best country in the category.

Stephen Harper's ambition is to make Canada a world leader. He has achieved his goal. When it comes to garbage, we lead the world. Otherwise, in almost every other category, we're near the bottom.


This entry is cross posted at Eradicating Ecocide.

A Bad Year For The Environment

Canada's native peoples understand how toxic the Harper government is for the environment. So does the Toronto Star:

Bill C-38 included more than $160 million in cuts to environmental spending, significantly impairing our ability to measure or mitigate our impact on Canada’s wilderness and wildlife. Yet it was never put before the Commons environment committee, nor does the bill ever mention climate change. 

The Harperites know exactly what they are doing. That is why they do it secretly.

Apparently the Department of Fisheries and Oceans can’t find the $2 million per year required to run the facility, though it will have to scare up the $50 million needed to remediate the lakes in the area upon the centre’s closing. It’s a bewildering decision that calls into question whether the government’s motivations are, as it claims, fiscal, or whether the Conservatives are instead trying to silence a source of inconvenient data.

Meanwhile, we needn’t wonder about the motivations behind the government’s scrapping of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, a federally funded environmental watchdog created by the Mulroney government in 1988. When asked in Parliament how the government justified its decision to cut funding for the organization, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird implied it was because the Conservatives objected to the Round Table’s repeated endorsements of a carbon tax.

The environment gets in the way of profits -- and profits are the be all and end all in Harperland -- even if they result in long term disaster. As the Star says, we need to debate the wisdom of government policy. But this government is not for turning. And it's certainly not for debating.

2012 was a bad year for the environment. One hopes that 2013 will be the year that Canadians turn against the Harper government.


This entry is cross posted at Eradicating Ecocide.

God On His Side

Canadians have long held that Church and State are separate entities. Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney -- both Catholics -- were instrumental in legalizing abortion. Perhaps they felt, like many Catholics, that they were not bound by each and every papal pronouncement. Or perhaps they personally held to the tenets of their faith, but felt it was not their job to legislate church doctrine.

 When it comes to Stephen Harper -- particularly when it comes to environmental policy and science in general -- one has to wonder. Ray Grigg cites a previous piece by the Alberta journalist Andrew Nikiforuk:

Because the Prime Minister will not publicly discuss his religious views, Nikiforuk's conclusions are conjectural. But the Prime Minister is known to belong to an Alberta fundamentalist Protestant church that espouses "evangelical climate skepticism". Nikiforuk contends that this church holds seven tenets which "not only explain startling developments in Canada but should raise the hair on the neck of every thinking citizen regardless of their faith: 1. Disdain for the environmental movement, 2. Distrust of mainstream science in general, 3. Distrust of the mainstream media, 4. Loyalty to the party, 5. Libertarian economics as God's will (God is opposed to government regulation or taxation), 6. Misunderstanding of divine sovereignty (God won't allow us to ruin creation), 7. Unreconstructed Dominion theology (God calls on humans to subdue and rule creation)."

Given the changes in the Omnibus Budget Bill, one has to wonder if Harper labours under the misplaced faith that God will not let us befoul creation:

A mere sample is staggering: no funding for the Polar Environment Arctic Research Laboratory, the definitive and authoritative monitor of northern climate change; withdrawal of financial support for the Kluane Research Station, a 50-year project studying high-latitude ecological changes; the slashing of almost all marine pollution monitoring; and dissolution of the National Round Table on Environment and Economy, the only institution that attempts to find sustainable business options that are satisfactory to both industry and environmentalists. Despite arguing austerity, the government found an additional $8 million of scarce money for Revenue Canada to more closely monitor environmental charities to be certain excessive funds are not being used for "political" advocacy. "Nearly half of the budget implementation bill," writes [Elizabeth] May, "is directed at re-writing Canada's foundational environmental laws." This includes the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Decisions once based on public processes guided by science now move to ministerial discretion.

President Kennedy, in his inaugural address, famously alluded to Isaiah when he declared, "God's work on earth must truly be our own." The problem is that history is full of religious zealots who claimed that God sanctioned ignorance and stupidity. It has never been God's work to burn witches or declare war on heathens. In fact, it has never been God's work to declare war of any kind -- on heathens, on science or the environment.

But, then, history was never Stephen Harper's strong suit. For him, perhaps faith trumps history. Perhaps he really believes that God is on his side.


This entry is cross posted at Eradicating Ecocide.

Harrper's War On The Environment

Canadians were quite happy not go to war in Iraq -- even though Stephen Harper said we had a moral duty to be there. And they were shocked this summer when the prime minister suggested that Canada should take on Iran. But, when Canadians learned during last week's budget that Mr. Harper had declared war on the environment, they shrugged. Christopher Hume writes in The Toronto Star that:

Even by the standards of a regime defined by its leader’s paranoia, Flaherty’s desire to stifle all debate about the environment was heavy-handed and ominously anti-democratic. Such vindictiveness indicates Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s generals are more concerned that they let on about the real impact of the tarsands, the exploitation of which has become his government’s Holy Grail.

If there was ever any doubt that Harper, Flaherty and Co. were in the pocket of big oil, last week's budget should have dispelled that illusion. Unfortunately, the majority of Canadians don't seem to be upset:

On that score, however, the population will give [Harper] a free ride. Though Canadians like to think they care about climate change, they are singularly unwilling to do anything about it. Mere mention of relatively benign measures such as road tolls, increased gas taxes and so on has normally mild-mannered Canucks sputtering in their beer.

Besides, these are hard times; Canadian should consider themselves lucky to have a resource such as the tarsands, one that will provide thousands of jobs for decades to come.

Harper claims to be far sighted, even as he takes Canada back to the days when we were hewers of wood and drawers of water, Like his ally, Rob Ford, he worries about the "war against the car." Yet 400,000 Torontoians voted for Rob Ford. And Stephen Harper -- admittedly by stealth -- is Prime Minister of Canada.

It happened on our watch. Cassius was unhappy when Julius Caesar declared himself Emperor. But he understood why it had happened. "The fault," he told Brutus, "is not in our stars but in ourselves."

This entry is cross posted at Eradicating Ecocide.