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KCC Board of Directors Meeting
New Shuffle, Marked Deck
Given Stephen Harper's desperate need to change the channel after a spring fraught with scandals – election fraud, financial fraud, senate fraud, PMO fraud – we all knew a Cabinet shuffle was coming. I took cerebral bets on the outcome and won most of them with a few glaring exceptions. Given the rules of political payback, the Prime Sinister had no choice but to keep the Mike Harrisites – Flaherty, Baird, and Clement – in the inner circle. Peter MacKay, who will eternally collect his thirty pieces of silver for turning over the Conservative name to the Reform Alliance posse, did a parallel career shift into Justice after being unable to defend his F-35 fiasco.
Another easy prediction – no senators allowed. After all, if you are going to try to toss the whole sober second chamber out, why bother. And besides, the stench of the PMO/Senate scandals did not fit with the happy tweeting about the fresh and innnocent new cabinet.
And no surprise for those who watch Power and Politics, that the young and photogenerational talking heads like Michelle Rempell and Chris Alexander will be now smiling for the camera from their new cabinet positions. Both had shown promise in the past but lately have demonstrated an inability to think – there is not much to talk about once you get past the glare of the Crest strip grin.
Now if a truly intelligent and independent thinker like Michael Chong, MP from Wellington-Halton Hills, had been appointed to the "new" Cabinet, it would have signalled genuine winds of change. Chong, however had previously supported Peter MacKay in the Conservative leadership race, went against the government's denier mentality in his support of the Kyoto Accord, and voted nay to Quebec as "a nation within Canada", all fatal flaws in the eyes of the PM.
Instead – in the first of my failed predictions – the hapless and synaptically challenged Pierre Poilievre, he of the now infamous blurt: "The root cause of terrorism is terrorists," makes it in as the Minister of State for Democratic Reform. Really? The thought of Harper's hyper-partisan yap dog trying to reform democracy is frightening indeed. This new position is a thinly disguised attempt to put Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy et al in a deep dark closet somewhere. Poilievre would best be assigned to the media room designing attack ads against anyone and anything slightly to the left of the extreme far right.
My second failure was in predicting that Peter Van Loan would be replaced. Astonishingly, he remains as Government House Leader, a continuing example of the bully-boy, bumbling brute kind of MP that Canadians have come to loathe. Sorry, Mr. Harper, nice try with the "generational change" shuffle, but you are obviously staying with the same predictable hand. And hard-working, tax-paying Canadians know your deck is marked.
*****
Skid Crease, Caledon
Harper Finds Humility
I have waited ten years to see Stephen Harper humbled. I thought it would take a full-blown caucus revolt or a leadership convention defeat, or a massive loss in the next federal election. It only took an act of nature. While his head was firmly stuck in the tar sands, all of Mr. Harper's climate change chickens came home to roost in the capital of his oil industry on June 20, 2013.
When he arrived in Calgary on June 21, the flood devastation was at its peak. There was no controlled media studio with seamlessly edited images of kittens and blue sweaters. This was all too real with a sombre Harper overlooking the Bow River flanked by some real leaders. 
The Mayor of Calgary was resolute, the Premier of Alberta was decisive, the Prime Minster of Canada was simply stunned. “I never imagined we could have a flood of this magnitude in this country. Until you really see it in person you don’t get a sense…this is an incredible event,” Harper said. No imagination. This is the same man who proclaimed that climate change was a socialist plot.
Aided by his "Friends of Science" climate change deniers like Tim Ball and Ross McKitrick and all the other signatories on the anti-Kyoto petition delivered to the newly installed PM in 2006, Harper has systematically destroyed Canada's credibility. He has denied accelerating climate change exists, has removed Canada from the Kyoto Protocol obligations, has snubbed existing environmental review policies, and has impeded the development of new ones. All the while, legitimate meteorologists and scientists have been warning about the increasing frequency of severe storms as one of the symptoms of accelerating climate change.
The insurance industry has also been vocal, serving notice that claims for severe storm damage have been steadily increasing in frequency and dollar amount. Unfortunately for Calgarians, Canada is the only G8 country that does not offer overland flood insurance. Critics of this lack of foresight have suggested that we adopt the UK model that links insurance policy coverage to the government's policies to mitigate severe climate change catastrophes. No government policy, no insurance coverage. And those policies would include severe storm disaster preparation.
Part of my heart and soul are in Alberta. I met my first grizzly in Waterton Lakes while horseback riding on the trails, and later rock climbing there marvelled at a golden eagle as it soared beneath me. I delivered my first major Global Perspectives keynote on Earth Day 1990 in Kananaskis Country to a lengthy standing ovation. I got married in 1999 in Canmore on the banks of Cougar Creek under the peaks of The Three Sisters and our wedding party walked through town along the Creek's new boardwalk. On June 20, 2013 that was all washed away. My entire wedding party lives and works in Calgary. I emailed them all as soon as we got news of the flood. Their homes were safe and the cabin in Canmore was on high ground and protected. They are also practitioners in wilderness crisis management, and their response didn't mince words: "We are fine, but the city is crippled. This is serious – there's a wide world of hurt ripping away so close to us."
Calgary and Alberta, my heart is with you. Stephen Harper, this is supposed to be your home – wake up!
*****
Skid Crease, Caledon
Skeptics versus Contrarians and Deniers
I accidently stumbled upon a website the other day that reminded me how dangerous the Internet can be for web surfers, especially students, searching for legitimate information. A simple search for a weather report landed me in the site of not just a climate change skeptic, but a climate change contrarian/denier.
A skeptic is one who doubts the validity of a scientific theory until proven otherwise – a necessary debate in science. But a contrarian/denier is one who dismisses the scientific validity of a theory despite overwhelming data, research, reports and scientific consensus. The term "denier" when applied to climate change was initially hotly debated by ethnic communities who claimed it was both usurping and denigrating the concept of World War II Jewish holocaust deniers. However, the terms holocaust and denier have legitimate and necessary meaning beyond the horrors of the last world war holocausts. Further, those terms are not owned by or copyrighted to Judaic history.
A holocaust is a sacrifice consumed by fire. It directly applies to fire and nuclear destruction involving extensive loss of life, 
but can also be extended to mean any massive slaughter of people. A holocaust denier is one who says the destruction/loss of life never happened. A climate change denier is one who says accelerating climate change due to anthropogenic causes is not happening. Both ways of thinking are equally condemnable.
When 95% of the practicing, published and peer-reviewed climate change scientists globally agree that a) climate change is a natural cyclical process, and b) we are living in a period of accelerating climate change due to anthropogenic causes, then anyone who disagrees with that consensus is not a skeptic, but a contrarian/denier. The accelerated change is a human caused economic decision, and the predicted collapse of species populations, including human, will result in a holocaust unparalleled in human history. The violence in the Middle East will pale in comparison with the global upheaval caused by the collapse of even one of Earth's ecological systems.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to predict what will happen when 7 billion people start scrambling for food and shelter on the remaining habitable spaces. The Earth is clearly saying, "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later." Deny this and we all pay.
*****
Skid Crease, Caledon