Christopher Hitchens advises in Letters to a Young Contrarian (17th epistle) that it can be a good thing to repeat a point at every opportunity, even if you risk being thought a bore for doing so.
Following that advice, I shall now point out once again that my country's current Prime Minister has a history of coziness with -- indeed sucking up to, when he isn't leading -- global warming deniers.
Before becoming primus inter pares in Canada's Cabinet, he scoffed at the work of climate scientists and declared the Kyoto Protocol a "socialist scheme" in a letter to party supporters.
I mention this again to my tens of readers as the Copenhagen session on climate change proceeds because Mr. Harper's background hints at how little we can expect from Canada in Copenhagen. The PM appears indifferent to global warming and hostile toward environmentalists.
The Harper government's environment minister said last week that Canada will cut greenhouse gases at a rate not faster than the United States' pace.
That amounts to a signal that Harper and Co. would like to do nothing, because they know Obama will have a tough time getting Congress to approve reduction targets or the plans for meeting them.
I'd like to be more optimistic, but I can see little reason for optimism.
(ADDENDUM: 1. Others are more optimistic about Copenhagen; Krugman, for example. 2. I didn't bother addressing the "climategate" ballyhoo since others have already done a much better job than I could possibly do on that file.)
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
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6 comments:
In this case, repeating the point at every turn is needed. The point in question needs to driven home, whenever, and wherever possible. People need to be reminded as often as possible that Harpo & Co. have no interest in enacting any form of progressive climate change legislation. Alberta-centric, with blinders on, they are willfully shortchanging our collective future in order to ensure short-term maximum profit levels for their buddies in resource extraction and oil industries. Shame!
That's a good tatic I'll use on issues dear to my heart.
As far as getting the average person on the climate train,we will be waiting at the station for years to come.
Most politicans only react when enough people get mad enough about an issue.
of course, FA, Harper should feel shame over his knuckle-dragging, foot-dragging approach. But I suspect he feels none.
Just FYI, Bigmac, Hitchens cites in particular his use of this tactic on William Jefferson Clinton re: the execution of Ricky Ray Rector.
Until your Prime Minister is faced with a loss of tourist dollars from the effects of climate change on tourism you're probably not going to get anywhere with him.
He has to placate his base anyway and embracing cliamte change would piss them off. Pollution makes lots of money.
But to deny this is silly borderline insane. I've seen the effects personally in middle Minnesota where I've fished over the years. The types of fish that are more abundant now. The seasons. The tree growth. How these fools blame this crap on "natural cycles" or sunspots and take themselves seriously is bemusing to be polite.
The US and Australia also each have a major political party infested with global-warming denialists, and of course the US has more creationists than other developed countries. The Anglosphere is strangely lagging behind the rest of the advanced world in embracing science.
It will become harder to keep this up in Canada, though. Let's see him try to convince people nothing is going on when the northern coast is facing Russia across just 1,000 miles of open ocean.
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