The Copenhagen summit is a hot topic for conversation. Recent polls show that a broad spectrum of Canadians are calling for decisive action on climate change. One wonders why Stephen Harper, who is on a quest for a majority government, continues to ignore an issue that speaks to so many Canadians.

A Conservative prime minister adopting an aggressively environmental platform seems ludicrous, but the political map of Canada is changing. Liberal strongholds are disappearing faster than the polar ice caps. Conservative candidates are beginning to see that environmental action is about saving the economy, not crippling it. It could be that the shortest road to a majority is for Stephen Harper to redefine the Conservative stance on climate change.
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A walkout is a victory for the deniers

I interviewed Elizabeth May yesterday on my “Climate Change Reality Radio Show,” Breakin’ Ice, and she’s certainly a smart cookie. By far the most knowledgeable of the federal leaders on global warming, greening the economy, and so on, she’s also the only one who ‘gets’ the danger of climate change.


But there is one critical thing she doesn’t get, and neither do most well-meaning people: Those she is up against have a different morality. I have called it the Predator Morality, as it accurately describes the behaviour of the deniers and free market fundamentalists. Think about the Canadian Harper government; these are people who wrote a secret manual on subverting our democratic system. Do you really think they are going to negotiate in good faith or that their word can be trusted? These are people who put ideology before their own children. Calling them predators is not name-calling – it is an accurate description of their observed behaviour.
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Flick off, Rex. Just flick off

How can we expect Canadians to vote in an informed manner when the CBC provides a platform – on the news, no less – to a nutter who chooses to believe paid oil company shills rather than Canada’s own climate scientists? Rex Murphy proudly notes that he gets his climate science from two guys who are not climate scientists; one is a former mining stock promoter and the other is an economist. Like Murphy, the economist is tight with the Libertarian Fraser Institute, which receives funding from ExxonMobil.

At best, this calls into question Murphy’s sense, and at worse, his integrity. Is he receiving money from Big Oil? Why else would any sane person believe two uncredentialed shills rather than Canada’s own scientists? Perhaps, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Rex Murphy believes this whole ‘global warming thing’ is a socialist conspiracy to take over the world?
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Stephen Harper and the Conservatives enjoy decent support in the polls. I suspect much of this is due to widespread – and justified – distrust of the Liberals in the West, combined with the belief that Mr. Harper is a Conservative.  But is he really? Are you getting what you’re voting for?

Canada is the biggest obstructor worldwide when it comes to action on global warming. This is deadly serious for many reasons. Even if Mr. Harper has bamboozled you into thinking that global warming is not happening, not human-caused, not a cause for concern, a giant socialist conspiracy, or some other claptrap, or if you believe that the Canadian government is doing the responsible thing about climate change, think again. You have been fooled by a master. Don’t believe politicians; go ask the scientists.
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In a previous post, I suggested that Mr. Harper and Mr. Ignatieff were, from the point-of-view of the average voter, slightly different flavours of vanilla. Someone on Reddit suggested that my post was a sales pitch for the Conservatives.

Considering that I have called for Mr. Harper to be charged with treason due to his obstruction and inaction on the climate crisis, the idea that I am suggesting people vote for the man is almost funny. The poor Redditor failed to understand the difference between analysis, which is what I was doing, and a recommendation, which I most definitely was not.

Just to be crystal clear, I am also extremely unimpressed with the other choices on the political spectrum. Jack Layton and the NDP seem to have forgotten what principles are in their desperate search for votes, any votes.
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Official portrait of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Port of Spain, Trinidad 2009

At the recently concluded Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper missed an opportunity to set a firm commitment for a reduction in North American greenhouse gas emissions which would have challenged his American counterpart to follow suit.

The Harper government has made no secret of its disdain for the existing Kyoto targets (which he once called ‘a Socialist scheme’), going so far as to announce what he felt were more ‘practical’ emissions reductions calling for a 20% reduction of 2006 levels by 2020. This has only raised the ire of environmental groups in Canada, who say that the government is in no position to promise alternative emissions reductions while opposing Kyoto and allowing the limits set by that protocol to balloon to levels 30% higher than the agreement called for.
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Just as I was starting to panic and think that I would have nothing to write about for my next blog, Mr. Harper came through for me in his most recent decision to attend the Copenhagen climate change meeting. Not that I think he shouldn’t attend it, I do – but the fact that he wasn’t going to attend until Obama decided to reminds me of high school, or maybe even junior high. Now I understand that rubbing elbows with Obama is probably a big thrill, one I would enjoy too, but seeing as Alberta alone emits more pollution than some small countries, I think Mr. Harper should have been attending regardless of what his US counterpart was doing that day – because it is the right thing to do, not the popular thing.

Like many of us years ago, I watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. However, unlike many of you, I made the mistake of watching The Day After Tomorrow right after it. The combination of the two scared the hell out of me. If you’ve seen the two films you understand what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, basically The Day After Tomorrow is like if An Inconvenient Truth was a movie and not a documentary: the world goes into another ice age because the North Atlantic current shuts down from melting ice caps and Canada gets wiped out by snow and ice; only the Southern hemisphere is unaffected. Now I know it’s just a movie and everything, but the science is basically true, and to me, that’s freakin’ scary. We’re talking doomsday stuff here, and need I remind anyone that 2012 is right around the corner. I’m not suggesting we base federal policy on the Mayan calendar, nor am I preaching a doomsday is imminent, but if we continue on this path, we will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sure it sells big bucks in the theatres, but I’d like theatres to be around in the next few decades and maybe more after that, I mean, I do have nieces and nephews.
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The political means of addressing climate change are once again up for discussion.

Nostradamus was right. The year 2012 will certainly bring the end of an era.

Next month’s UN convention on climate change in Copenhagen reminds us that the Kyoto Protocol is on its last legs.

Indeed, the world’s first legally-binding legislation on greenhouse gas emission and climate change, for years battered and bruised through political conflagrations, diluted by the rhetoric of parliamentarians and spokespersons, pondered, plied and twisted through years of delay, and ultimately never ratified by the United States, is in need of a successor. And if Environment Minister Jim Prentice’s prognostications prove accurate, a definitive deal will not be reached in the Danish capital.
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With less than 40 days remaining before the governments of the world convene to hammer out a save-our-species style of agreement on Climate Change, there is a lot of bustling going on in Ottawa. For one thing this is an especially busy time for the staffers behind our politicians. I’m talking about those brave unheralded souls running around Ottawa buying plane tickets, planning dinners, and ensuring the business-attire economy remains recession-proof. Oh yes, the assistant armies of Ottawa are working all hours to ensure that our Government’s representatives are going to look good, eat-well, and rest comfortably while discussing the future of the planet in Copenhagen (COP15).

Good for those assistants: doing their jobs and taking the COP15 climate talks seriously. If only our Conservative Government and the official Opposition could do the same.

Bill C-311, otherwise known as the Climate Change Accountability Act, would have been a good opportunity for Steve and Mike’s boys and girls to begin to address Canada’s currently negligent role in international climate talks. The Bill, sponsored by the NDP’s Bruce Hyer, would see that the Government — no matter which party is in power — be on the hook to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gasses by 25% of 1990 levels, by the year 2020. Going forward, the Bill aimed to lower emissions by 80% of 1990 levels, by the year 2050.
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Without disputing its cause or causes, impact or impacts, solution or solutions, most governments around the world have got climate change popping on their agenda all the time. Our energy has been invested in diverse ways to find possibilities of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. We’ve explored measures ranging from simple, “easy-to-do” home based stuffs like: “turn off”; to large scale, complex scientific experiments such as adding iron to the ocean, in what is known as: “ocean fertilization”.
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