This past Monday both the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail ran editorials dedicated to trashing Stephen Harper’s government’s approach to “dealing” with the environment. They were right to have done so. A recent poll suggests that Canadians find the environment the second most important issue facing the nation (after health care), with seventy one percent responding that the Harper government has not been “tough enough” in handling environmental concerns. Thus, as usual, Harper is way off to the right of the public and all serious scholarship.
What do I mean by “serious?” I don’t mean the kind of junk science that’s funded by concerned environmentalists such as Exxon Mobil. Rather, I mean bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who have concluded that most of the warming of the last fifty years or so is attributable to human activities, mostly due to a sharp increase in greenhouse gas emissions. I also mean the National Scientific Academies of the G8 nations, along with those of Brazil, China, and India, who have all explicitly endorsed the IPCC’s assessment reports.
Thus, when Harper recently claimed that “the science [of climate change] is still evolving,” he managed to say something that is simultaneously trivially true and highly misleading, a rare achievement. First, all sciences are still evolving — it’s the nature of the enterprise. Second, his statement conceals the fact that there is overwhelming consensus among the scientific community about the extent of global warming and the causal factors leading to it.
His mastery of English wizardry further extends to Harper’s Conservatives’ proposed “Clean Air Act,” which, if passed, would have done anything but cleaned the air. It is a good thing that the proposed legislation is no longer on the table, after having been universally criticized as wholly inadequate. Not only did the criticism prevent the serious environmental damage that would have ensued, it also allowed Canadians to save face in the international community. Rarely has any document produced by the Canadian government been so thoroughly confused. Not only was it more or less devoid of any substantive content, particularly with respect to greenhouse gas emissions, it took a “one-size fits all” type approach to smog, greenhouse gasses, household mould, inter alia. In fact, as a proposed substitute for the Kyoto Protocol, which Canada is alone in thinking is unfeasible, it would have left Canada a far worst polluter than it already is.
Over sixty years ago, Karl Polanyi taught us that the commodification character of capitalism would result in devastation of our environment. He argued that this would necessitate social interventions in order to save ourselves from the market’s inherently destructive tendencies. However, it is equally important to note that interventions by governments can both serve to fight the destructive tendencies of the market and to enhance them. That is a choice point. A government that is accountable to the public may well, under the right conditions, protect society from the savegery of the market. On the other hand, a government accountable to only the powerful sectors of society may, if the interests of the latter diverge from those of the general public, work to proliferate the destruction. In this case, with Mr. Harper deep in the pockets of the polluters (mostly large multinationals), his government seems intent on acting to enhance the devastation that’s all around us.
What’s the solution? Canadians are not, no matter what the Conservatives think, that much dumber than the Europeans. If the Europeans can fulfill their commitment to Kyoto, so can we. The will of the Canadian public is firmly behind Kyoto, as is the scientific community. Mr. Harper needs to have the courage and the vision to stand up to the polluters, to stop them from imposing negative externalities on the public in order to build on their record profits. The government must work to fulfill its legally binding commitments to the Kyoto Protocol immediately, and leave its “made in Canada” solutions for matters that are less urgent and less well-understood.
Eyes and Brains Wide Shut on the Environment
December 23, 2006 at 4:06 am · Filed under Socio-Political Commentary, Uncategorized
This past Monday both the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail ran editorials dedicated to trashing Stephen Harper’s government’s approach to “dealing” with the environment. They were right to have done so. A recent poll suggests that Canadians find the environment the second most important issue facing the nation (after health care), with seventy one percent responding that the Harper government has not been “tough enough” in handling environmental concerns. Thus, as usual, Harper is way off to the right of the public and all serious scholarship.
What do I mean by “serious?” I don’t mean the kind of junk science that’s funded by concerned environmentalists such as Exxon Mobil. Rather, I mean bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who have concluded that most of the warming of the last fifty years or so is attributable to human activities, mostly due to a sharp increase in greenhouse gas emissions. I also mean the National Scientific Academies of the G8 nations, along with those of Brazil, China, and India, who have all explicitly endorsed the IPCC’s assessment reports.
Thus, when Harper recently claimed that “the science [of climate change] is still evolving,” he managed to say something that is simultaneously trivially true and highly misleading, a rare achievement. First, all sciences are still evolving — it’s the nature of the enterprise. Second, his statement conceals the fact that there is overwhelming consensus among the scientific community about the extent of global warming and the causal factors leading to it.
His mastery of English wizardry further extends to Harper’s Conservatives’ proposed “Clean Air Act,” which, if passed, would have done anything but cleaned the air. It is a good thing that the proposed legislation is no longer on the table, after having been universally criticized as wholly inadequate. Not only did the criticism prevent the serious environmental damage that would have ensued, it also allowed Canadians to save face in the international community. Rarely has any document produced by the Canadian government been so thoroughly confused. Not only was it more or less devoid of any substantive content, particularly with respect to greenhouse gas emissions, it took a “one-size fits all” type approach to smog, greenhouse gasses, household mould, inter alia. In fact, as a proposed substitute for the Kyoto Protocol, which Canada is alone in thinking is unfeasible, it would have left Canada a far worst polluter than it already is.
Over sixty years ago, Karl Polanyi taught us that the commodification character of capitalism would result in devastation of our environment. He argued that this would necessitate social interventions in order to save ourselves from the market’s inherently destructive tendencies. However, it is equally important to note that interventions by governments can both serve to fight the destructive tendencies of the market and to enhance them. That is a choice point. A government that is accountable to the public may well, under the right conditions, protect society from the savegery of the market. On the other hand, a government accountable to only the powerful sectors of society may, if the interests of the latter diverge from those of the general public, work to proliferate the destruction. In this case, with Mr. Harper deep in the pockets of the polluters (mostly large multinationals), his government seems intent on acting to enhance the devastation that’s all around us.
What’s the solution? Canadians are not, no matter what the Conservatives think, that much dumber than the Europeans. If the Europeans can fulfill their commitment to Kyoto, so can we. The will of the Canadian public is firmly behind Kyoto, as is the scientific community. Mr. Harper needs to have the courage and the vision to stand up to the polluters, to stop them from imposing negative externalities on the public in order to build on their record profits. The government must work to fulfill its legally binding commitments to the Kyoto Protocol immediately, and leave its “made in Canada” solutions for matters that are less urgent and less well-understood.
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