War on prosperity

[ivbinconned]

The coming Tory war on prosperity

Font: * * * * Terence Corcoran, Financial Post

Published: Friday, January 05, 2007

Who would have thought that a vote for Harper's Conservatives would turn into a vote for David Suzuki's warped war on modern prosperity. That Prime Minister Stephen Harper is now openly flirting with Suzukiism was reinforced yesterday as he explained his Cabinet shuffle and the government's new environmental focus. He said he aimed to tackle long term environmental issues that have been badly neglected. "Most Canadians simply don't understand how far Canada is behind on major environmental indicators compared to other developed countries -- not the developing world -- compared to other developed countries we are behind."

In a newspaper interview just before Christmas, Mr. Harper said Canada's environmental record is "the worst in the developed world ... in just about every measure." In an interview with CTV, he said Canada's environmental performance "is, by most measures, the worst in the developed world. We've got big problems." Now defunct Environment Minister Rona Brockovich made the same claims earlier in the year.

There is only one study model by only one group in the world that ranks Canada as the worst environmental performer among developed nations, and that's the work of David Suzuki and a collection of academic activists associated with Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria. The latest in the line landed last month from the Suzuki Foundation, a report that begins: "Canada has among the worst environmental record of any developed country, ranking 28th out of 30 OECD countries."

Authority for this claim, absurd on its face -- ranking Canada behind the likes of Greece, Poland, Turkey and Mexico--is a 2005 report, The Maple Leaf in the OECD, produced by the Suzuki Foundation and environmental academics from Simon Fraser. That report in turn draws on Canada Vs. The OECD: An Environmental Comparison, a 2001 work by David R. Boyd, eco-research chair of environmental law at the University of Victoria.

The 2001 Boyd report, the founding catalogue of misleading indicators, warped assumptions and outrageous conclusions should send the Harper Tories running for cover. Instead, the government has adopted the report's methodology as legitimate foundation for political policy.

The first and obvious clue that the Boyd report is trouble is the appearance of Mexico as No. 2 in the ranking. Is Mexico a model for green policy? Will Canada send new Environment Minister John Baird to Mexico on a fact finding mission to unearth the secrets of Mexico's environmental success?

Mexico ranks high on the Suzuki-Boyd rankings for one main reason: low growth and dismal standard of living. Take transportation: Canada ranks 26th for distance travelled by road vehicles per capita, while Mexico ranks 1st. Canada ranks 25th in the high number of vehicles per ca pita, while Mexico is 2nd with few vehicles. Why? Nobody in Mexico can afford cars or road travel.

The transportation area captures the overriding moral theme of the New Conservative standard for environmental success. Economic progress, symbolized by the ability of people to own motor cars and travel about, live well, produce energy, keep warm and keep cool, leads to environmental failure that must be corrected. Economic stagnation and reversal produces success. Mexico is good, Canada is bad.

The Suzuki-Boyd standards take economic success and growth-- real productivity --and turns them into negatives. The very existence of more Canadians is portrayed as a curse that drags Canada down. "Population is a key element in calculating overall impact on the environment.... Surprisingly, Canada places 26th out of the 29 OECD nations in population growth."

Canada's success as a food producer is a cause for low rankings and a liability that must be corrected. "Animals kept for livestock purposes cause a range of environmental problems." Canada ranks 16th in livestock per capita. Per capita! This fits with the latest United Nations scare mongering report that listed farm livestock as a bigger source of greenhouse gas emissions that the automobile. Which industry are the New Conservatives going to tackle first --farming or automakers and gasoline producers?

When Mr. Harper says Canada has fallen far behind the developed world, he is endorsing the idea that Canada should be condemned for its prosperity. Canada uses more energy per capita than Mexico because it produces more energy to sustain its high standard of living --and because Canada has a climate and geography and industrial structure that thrives on energy. Canada exports energy to the world, especially the United States. By rating Canada's energy performance against nations that produce little energy (Switzerland, for example,) is ludicrous.

The more recent 2005 rankings from the Suzuki Foundation follow the same pattern, although it managed to correct some of the worst of the original Boyd report. The Boyd version ranked Canada 25th in use of fertilizer per capita, a meaningless measure. The 2005 report managed to rank Canada second by measuring fertilizer use per unit of arable land.

But other idiotic and un Conservative comparisons emerged. Canada ranked 28th on "environmental pricing," which is a euphemism for higher taxes. Ranked at the top of the environmental tax list were Turkey and Mexico.

By adopting the Suzuki measures of national environmental success, Mr. Harper and his government have signed on to a world view based on the idea that modern industrial society is an evil system. The way forward for Suzuki is to step back into the crude, simple and impoverished world of centuries past. Mexico is better than Canada, Cuba is better than the United States. It's a war on prosperity.

Is this the foundation for Canada's New Conservatism?

[ivbinconned]

The Greening Of Stephen Harper
For six months, the federal government has been presenting Canada around the world as an emerging energy superpower. No more, at least for now. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has drunk the green kool-aid. Under pressure from Central Canadian voters, he's recasting his image as far more enviro-friendly. The crucial question for oil and gas producers is this: Are the Conservatives willing to hobble the petroleum sector - and, if so, how much - in order to win the next election?

The federal shift in direction comes at an awkward moment. It adds to the uncertainty already created by wobbly oil and natural gas prices, Harper's previous decision to tax income trusts, Alberta's impending oil and gas royalty review and a softening world economy.

To date, Harper's greenward move has involved shuffling his Cabinet on January 4 and plenty of rhetoric in favour of limiting greenhouse gas emissions (primarily carbon dioxide) and air pollutants. The target of these changes appears to be voters in Ontario and Quebec, the pivotal battlegrounds in an election which could well occur this spring.

The verbal change in the Conservatives' attitudes toward greenhouse gases deeply concerns Tom Harris, executive director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP). The Ottawa-based non-profit group challenges the scientific majority which has coalesced around the idea that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is probably warming up the world. While NRSP enthusiastically endorses greater energy efficiency as beneficial to both the economy and the environment, its scientific advisory board argues two fundamental points regarding climate change:

The research into this extremely complex phenomenon remains frustratingly uncertain. Still in doubt are the degree of global warming in the future, as well as the role played by man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as opposed to natural forces like changes in solar radiation.
Some analysts conclude that adapting to slightly higher temperatures makes far more economic sense than trying to suppress climate variations (which NRSP scientists maintain is likely impossible). The leading advocate for an adaptive strategy is Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who chairs the Copenhagen Consensus Center. (His basic theme is that other world problems, like hunger and AIDS, are far more serious threats to human well-being.)
"Harper's team has never made any attempt to publicly and thoroughly assess the state of climate science and work out rational responses to this important issue," Harris (shown below) comments. "Instead of governing on a foundation of actual science, the Conservatives have now decided to pander to public perceptions that are based on demonstrably unreliable computer models and outright propaganda. It's a disappointing development."


When Harper formed his minority government one year ago, most Albertans appreciated having a prime minister from their own province. But many oilpatchers and investors lost their sense of political security on October 31 with the federal announcement of its plan to tax income trusts. That policy, which affects not only oil and gas income trusts but medium and small producers who sell assets to trusts, had been specifically ruled out by the Tories during the election campaign.

Harper's switch on income trust taxation underscored the fact that his party faces little threat on its western and conservative flanks. In particular, people who question the concept of man-made global warming are not likely to vote for Stephane Dion. The newly-chosen Liberal leader, an avid green and former federal environment minister, takes pride in having won international agreement at a Montreal meeting in 2005 to extend the Kyoto protocol beyond 2012.

As an example of the Conservatives' dramatic about-face on climate change, Harris points to Bob Mills, who chairs the Commons Committee on Environmental and Sustainable Development. Before the last election, the Red Deer MP was his party's environment critic in opposition.

In 2002, Mills delivered an 11-hour climate science-based filibuster speech in opposition to the Kyoto agreement. He also complained in the bitterest terms that the Liberal government generally blocked testimony from scientists who challenged the green orthodoxies about global warming. "To just hear one side of an issue is certainly not what I think a committee should do and it's not in good conscience that we can do that," Mills declaimed.

In government, his tune has changed. From late October through early December, his environment committee heard expert testimony concerning a proposed private member's bill which would force the federal government to define how it will meet Canada's international commitments under the Kyoto Protocol and then to actually implement these plans. "Mills has been even more ruthless than the Liberals about preventing skeptical scientists from appearing," Harris comments. "Only those scientists who support the human-caused warming hypothesis were invited to testify, even though Mills is well aware of the highly qualified Canadian climate experts on the other side."

The same change of tone extends upward to the prime minister. "From what I've seen, the preponderance of evidence suggests this [i.e. global warming] is a real and a serious problem," Harper told the National Post on December 18. "As you know, the science has evolved several times even in the last couple of decades, but all the evidence suggests that we should take the problem seriously and start to try and act on it."

In mid-October, the federal government introduced the Clean Air Act, which will impose regulations on large-scale emitters of CO2 (the greenhouse gas of concern under Kyoto) and noxious gases by 2010. Detailed emission targets for each industrial sector are scheduled to be in place by this spring, consistent with a possible election at that time.

The Conservatives have some enthusiasts within their ranks who favour aggressive impositions on industry in the name of global warming. Mark Warwara, a Tory MP from British Columbia and parliamentary secretary to the environment minister, has publicly called carbon dioxide a "pollutant" (in fact, it is an essential ingredient for life on earth). In an interview with the Langley Times, Warwara said the planned Clean Air regulations will require oil companies to "build the infrastructure to capture CO2, and either inject it into the Earth or manufacture it into a commodity to sell."

The Conservatives have still not endorsed the Kyoto Protocol as an effective solution to global warming. In part, that's because most of the world's greenhouse gas emitters (including the United States, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and many other nations) either remain outside the agreement or have made no commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Harris concedes that the Conservatives may try to conciliate green-minded public opinion in Quebec and Ontario with emotive words rather than impose genuine hardship on the petroleum sector. Anyone interested in what the government intends to do might be well advised to keep an eye on the suggestively-named environment and energy security committee which Harper recently decided to form.

The chairman of that Cabinet committee will be Jim Prentice, the Calgary MP whose day job is minister of Indian affairs and northern development. Prentice is reportedly acting behind the scenes as the political point man in negotiations with the petroleum industry concerning its emission targets under the Clean Air Act.

"When it comes to actual CO2 reductions, the Liberals talked big but accomplished very little," Harris says. "It would be ironic if the Conservatives talked moderation but actually inflict serious damage on our economy through forcing such reductions. At this point, that possibility cannot be ruled out."

[cowman]

The "greenie war" is all about smoke and mirrors? What was Kyota but a big joke? Keep on polluting...but send money! Sort of like the old televangelist....You are a sinner and need to repent...but most important...SEND MONEY! LOL
Harper isn't an idiot. If he wants to get elected in this disfunctional country, he needs to play the game? And right now it seems the "game" is the La La land of the central Canadian yuppie? Don't burden us with taking away the BMW or stopping our exotic vacations, but lets talk about changing the lightbulbs and how can we tax those darned oilmen and farmers...who are ruining the planet!
I truly doubt man is destroying the climate? Mount Pinatubo put more green house gasses into the atmosphere than humans have in 2000 years! And that is only one volcano!
Now I don't believe that means we shouldn't be trying to clean things up? Obviously the garbage we have to breathe is important? Obviously we don't want to drink slop? Worry about those type of things and the rest will follow?
Stephane Dion should not get a free ride when he tries to portray himself as the prince of the Environment? The great proponent of Kyoto! So what is his excuse for doing nothing for all those years? Nothing to implement Kyoto?....And now he says we need to re-affirm our committment to Kyoto...what does that mean? Does it mean we'll have a big news conference, pat each other on the back...and then do nothing again?

[ivbinconned]

His commitment to Kyoto means that he feeds and walks his DOG...named "Kyoto"!

Nothing will ever change in this country with out significant constitutional change. Untill then the only two questions that ever matter is "what does Quebec want, and what does Ontario want??

[cowdog]

As a farmer I worry more about the real climate change I have observed in my lifetime and less about the tripe you read in the Financial Post.

[cowman]

cowdog: We all should be concerned about the environment. Maybe that is why we should be concerned with finding real solutions instead of the socialist agenda of a David Suzuki? Going back to being a subsistance society is really not an option?
Is the world warming up, due to mankind? I don't know, do you? The second question is: Is that a bad thing? Again, I don't know...sure wish it was some winter days!
I don't envy Stephen Harper or John Baird these days. How do you balance economic growth with cleaning up the environment? How do you oppose an opponent that is promising a Utopia?
Now mind you this same opponent did absolutely nothing the last thirteen years and probably won't do anything if they get in again! What they will do however is make a tax grab from Alberta(in the name of climate change) so they can buy the votes in Quebec and Ontario!
That is really what this is all about...not climate change? The Liberals have never cared about climate change...just look how far they went with Kyoto.