I watched our Prime Minister’s year end interview with Peter Mansbridge on CBC news the other night and was shocked. First, was Harper’s quote from his first overseas trip to Berlin for the G8: “Climate change is perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today.” Wow – was this the same Stephen Harper who had declared climate change to be a socialist plot?

And then came the equally astonishing quote: “We owe it to future generations, we as Canada. When you’re linking climate change to greenhouse gas emissions, we owe it to future generations to do whatever we can to address this world problem. We should make a substantial contribution to confronting this challenge. Talking the talk doesn’t work anymore. It’s time to walk the walk.” Another Wow – was this the same Stephen Harper who had led Canada to yearly “Fossil of the Year” awards for having no policies to deal with accelerating climate change?

As he stumbled through his explanations of those quotes, I wondered how it was possible for a public figure to lie so publicly without any apparent shame. He claimed all GHG reduction benefits from closing coal fired power plants as if that was a federal initiative, and not Ontario’s provincial policy. He forgot to mention that any reductions from Ontario’s initiative were offset by rapidly rising GHG emissions from the oil industry in Alberta.

It’s really all about power: political power and energy power and how to keep the myth alive. Whether it is pipelines from Alberta or plutonium in Ontario, our politicians will do their best to spin the story to their advantage. While Ontarian’s did very well to phase out coal fired electricity plants, they would be wise to keep a close eye on the first private plutonium ownership known as Bruce Nuclear. Its cosy relationship with the Ontario Energy Board does not bode well when the CEO of Bruce recommends that his private corporation take over control of all of Ontario’s nuclear production.

It’s also still worth keeping a close eye on McGuinty’s legacy with the gas plant scandal. Anytime a politico has all the hard drives wiped clean, you know something is rotten in the riding. Here was a case when a good energy power idea – clean electrical production – lost out to the political power incentive.

We constantly have to contend with the constant pipelines pitch – whether it be Enbridge or Trans-Canada, the ads are all about how good, green, and clean the transportation of tar sands oil and fracked gas will be for the environment, our children, and, of course, the economy. Brought to you by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. If you don’t like our ads, we will have the Canadian Revenue Agency audit your local environmental defence charity. Another Wow!

Now, all of us have to admit that we love oil. It’s in our clothes, our bread bag tabs, our plastic water bottles, and anyone who drives a car needs oil. It needs to get to us somehow, so we have a choice of pipelines, rail cars, transport trucks, and tanker ships. The question is not whether we need oil in our current energy mix until we wean ourselves to something more sustainable. We need oil. Period.

What we also need are federal and provincial policies that ensure that the production and transportion of that resource are done in the safest, most environmentally responsible ways possible. We also need policies that encourage the development of alternative energy sources on a level playing field by ending the ridiculous subsidies now being given to Big Oil and by imposing meaningful royalties on a finite resource.

Does this mean that Canadians should consider a National Energy Policy? Of course! And all necessary provincial ministers should be sitting down with the federal government to come to consensus on how to plan for the present of our seniors and the future of our children. Does this mean Canada will institute a Carbon Tax? Guaranteed!

It was at this point in the Mansbridge interview that Stephen Harper lost it. He just couldn’t bring himself to say, “Carbon tax.” Heaven forbid that he acknowledge that Stephane Dion was right all along. Harper tried to present it as a “levy” as per the Alberta tech fund, a provincial and not a federal initiative, by the way, that “taxes” GHGs at a nominal rate and invests it in alternative energy research.

Sadly, Our Government’s leader couldn’t even get out the word “levy” easily, finally settling on “pricing” carbon. We can play with tax, levy, price, and other words to pay for our excessive production of carbon dioxide and methane, but it all means the same thing. The planet is saying, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later, but you will pay.”

When asked if he thought climate change was still the biggest threat to humanity, Harper added the economy and radicalized extremists to the list. He still can’t see the difference between a planetary issue affecting all life on earth and the petty squabbles of power hungry humans.

We will all pay for that lack of vision.

*****

Skid Crease, Caledon

Dear Michelle,

I understand that you feel quite safe and secure in your own bedroom, safe from ISIS and ISIL and accelerating global climate change health hazards. I know that you must be working very hard to ensure that every woman in the world feels the same. Like the young Albertan woman in Syria trying to bring her family home from the warzone so close to ISIS fanatics. Like the hundreds of thousands of women and children whose safety is compromised daily by war, rape, slavery, inadequate nutrition, and accelerating climate change impacts.

I know you must be endlessly petionning your leader to ensure that your safety is duplicated the world over for the women and children of every race and religion. That is why you can pose so comfortably smug in your bedroom, safe in the knowledge that you work ceaselessly for the policies that will make the world a safer place for all women and children.

I know that beside you on your pillow is the latest copy of the World Health Organization assessment that outlines the health impacts of accelerating climate change. You no doubt highlighted the passage that shows the increase in climate change related deaths between 2030 and 2050 – the one that shows that 38,000 of the most vulnerable will die of heat exposure, 48,000  due to diarrhoea, 60,000 to malaria, and 95,000 due to childhood undernutrition.

This bleak future will fall mainly on the women and children of developing countries, but no doubt by then your selfless endeavours to bring peace and security to the world will have all of them tweeting about how safe they feel in the comfort of their own bedrooms.

Congratulations, Michelle. You are a shining beacon of hope to women everywhere.

*****

Skid Crease, Caledon

It was no great surprise to read that “Our Government™” recently rejected an economic analysis from the Stockholm Environmental Institute in Seattle, Washington. The study showed that the Keystone XL project could produce four times the amount of greenhouse gases previously calculated by the U.S. State Department.

Naturally, anything that contradicts the federal Conservative’s position on tar sands extraction, production, and transportation must be based on “false assumptions”, as a Natural Resources Canada spokesperson stated. The U.S. State Department at least had the good grace not to respond to a valid study.

First, to be absolutely clear, as politicians like to state, there is a profound difference between the science of climate change and the social science of economics. One is the systematic and testable study of the long-term weather patterns of our world; the other is the study of humanity and its management of resources within that world.

For our current government, the social science of economics trumps all other forms of information gathering. In fact, if scientific climate studies disagree with the government’s sociological economic position, the reports are edited, buried, or discredited. It was no surprise that Kinder Morgan, its pipeline development rubber stamped by Harper’s National Energy Board, defeated the Town Of Burnaby in court. It can now continue its destruction of B.C.s conservation lands unimpeded by red tape or environmental science.

One of my most respected sources for science information was a senior climatologist at Environment Canada. Whenever I had a question from students or teachers, and I couldn’t find legitimate data, I went to him. He published his last report for climate change for the government in 2005, and then quit because they were editing out any scientific data that conflicted with the government’s ideological economic position.

He and the One Tonne Challenge were among the first casualties of a new government that regarded Climate Change as a socialist plot. The United Nations CoP11 and Kyoto agreements fell shortly after. Carbon taxes! Carbon credits! Conservation! Heresy! The economy will collapse bringing down our hard working, taxpaying, and law-abiding Canadian way of life!

The clarion call went out to censure those foreign funded eco-terrorists, those grant-seeking scientists, and those threats to the global economy. With our taxpayer money, television ads were purchased for the Economic Action Plan, the promotion of Keystone and Northern Gateway, and the joys of drilling and fracking to get more oil and natural gas out of that pesky bitumen and shale.

And the contaminants, the greenhouse gases, the true cost of very dirty energy? All necessary to sustain our way of life and our corporate profits. After all, most of the collateral damage lives downstream and downwind.

Not a single ad was purchased with our taxpayer money to do a public service commercial on a scientific analysis of the real cost of extracting oil from the tar sands or fracking for shale gas. Not a single ad was purchased with our taxpayer money to do a public service announcement from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report on science, impacts, and mitigation.

I would expect the petrochemical industry to lobby government for the approval of its projects, to seduce politicians to their point of view, and to attempt to subvert scientific reports contrary to its interests. I do not expect my government to do that lobbying for them. When our politicians become polluted, it is time for environmentally literate citizens to find a cleaner source of democracy.

*****

Skid Crease, Caledon