A Horrible Idea Whose Time Should Not Come

Levac: Carbon tax "presently on the table"

In 2008, the federal Liberal party presented to Canadians a proposal that could have precipitated an economic disaster in Canada.

Pitched by Stephane Dion, cobbled together from an idea proposed by Michael Ignatieff during the 2006 Liberal leadership campaign, they called it the Green Shift. It was essentially a carbon tax paired with income tax cuts.

Yet the income tax "cuts" wouldn't reduce the tax burden on the average Canadian family. Shifted to industry in the form of a carbon tax, those cuts would come back to haunt Canadians in the form of higher prices for absolutely everything. As private businesses are not charities, they would inevitably pass their higher costs along to the consumer.

The best-case scenario was that Canadians would be no better off for indulging the Liberal Party's foray into utopianism. A likelier scenario is that the tax would have scared off foreign and domestic investment in Canada, ultimately leading to an economic collapse.

Now, with the 2011 Ontario election on the line, Premier Dalton McGuinty is considering setting Ontario on this very disastrous path.

With the green energy companies that were to be the feathers in McGuinty's cap failing one by one -- in some cases, failing to do much of anything but provide McGuinty with photo ops -- McGuinty is turning to the last alternative policy that he can to pander to environmentalists.

In an online chat, Dave Levac, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, has indicated that the McGuinty Liberals are already considering a carbon tax.

"It's being reviewed, and some of my colleagues are more enthusiastic about it than others," Levac declared. "There is a possibility that a carbon tax is on the table to evaluate, because it already is."

Levac noted that a carbon tax is not presently in the Liberal election platform. This is something of a meaningless detail; many of the things that were in the last Liberal election platform were not done. Many of the things that were done -- including the HST -- were not in the election platform.

Regardless of how sympathetic McGuinty is to a carbon tax proposal, he owes it to the voters of Ontario to not spring it on them as a post-election surprise. The time to tell Ontario voters precisely what manner of a carbon tax is on the table.

If the Liberals had learned from the failure of Canadians to fall for the proposals of their federal counterparts, the answer would be "none at all". Yet as Dave Levac has it, this is not the case.

A carbon tax would drive up the cost of literally everything an Ontario family consumes: housing, energy, groceries, everything.

Dalton McGuinty owes Ontarians the opportunity to use the 2011 election as a referendum on such a prospect. Whether or not he'll be forthcoming with Ontario voters remains yet to be seen.

David Suzuki Extinguishes His Own Credibility

When the Ontario Liberal Party secured the endorsement of David Suzuki, they were so excited they went out and made an ad about it.

In it, Suzuki extinguishes what little remained of his own credibility. Gushing over Premier Dalton McGuinty's environmental record, Suzuki declares how excited he was when McGuinty promised to shut down Ontario's coal-fired power plants. He declares the promise to be "a big step" toward fixing Ontario's relationship with the environment.

The problem is that McGuinty made the promise, then promptly set about breaking it. In 2006, he promised to shut down those power plants by 2009. In 2009, he promised to shut them down by 2014 He might not be around to keep that promise in 2014. Even if he is, he probably won't.

Even McGuinty's vaunted green jobs accomplishments are fading, as green energy firms continue laying workers off. Adding to the comedy is McGuinty staging a photo op at a solar panel factory that had shut down production.

In other words, McGuinty's environmental record is not all rainbows and sunshine. It's actually piss-poor at best. All he's offering in the 2011 election is more of the promises he already broke. He'll never keep them.

It only makes sense that the Liberals would work so hard to establish themselves as good environmentalists. But Ontarians aren't stupid, and can spot a broken promise when someone makes it again. In their effort to brand themselves as the party for the environment, they've managed to counter-brand themselves as promise-breakers.

For himself, Suzuki has done worse. In attempting to brand himself the voice of environmentalism in the 2011 election, he's counter-branded himself as an unprincipled hack who offers the Liberal Party's broken promises up as if they were achievements.

He's definitively turned his back on his own credibility. He'll never be taken seriously again.

It's Too Late For That, Lizzie May...

Elizabeth May the Green Party's "lone voice in the wilderness"

For the first time in her life, Elizabeth May is a Member of Parliament.

For the first time in its history, the Green Party has an MP that they actually elected. (As opposed to a disgraced Liberal-turned-Green.)

All Elizabeth May had to do to make that happen was make her election the one and only priority of her party. All she had to do to accomplish that was largely abandon her party's candidates in the rest of the country. That she bastardized her party's constitution along the way will likely be dismissed by many Green Party supporters as a minor detail.

But now that May has won her way into Parliament -- and regardless of how poorly she handled her leadership responsibilities during the 2011 federal election, she did it fair and square -- she doesn't want to be a mere "lone voice int he wilderness".

Too late.

But interestingly enough, May says she wants to reach across party boundaries to other MPs. Notably, Conservative MPs.

“We have to approach Conservative MPs to join with us on specific issues,” May declared, noting she is mainly thinking of environmental issues. She's named her priorities as an oil tanker moritorium in BC, more national parks representing each of Canada's ecosystems, and fighting climate change.

Of these issues, May will likely find receptive allies in the Conservative caucus on the national parks issue. Not nearly so much on the other two, which are largely ideological issues.

While May's attitude toward inter-party cooperation is much improved -- she's finally realized she's better off trying to work with members of all the parties, as opposed to tirelessly raving against one -- she may be in for quite the shock.

By her own doing, May very much is a lone voice in Canada's Parliamentary wilderness.

And while Conservative MPs would do well to listen to anyone who cares to speak to them, May could find that her behaviour toward the Tories to date has left very few Conservatives with any reason, whatsoever, to trust her.

If she wanted to work with Conservatives within Parliament, she should have throught about that years ago, before she started practically branding them environmental criminals.

So How Seriously Does the Green Party Really Take Climate Change?

Throughout the 2011 election campaign -- and for years beforehand -- the Green Party has presented itself as the best party to fight climate change. Even when Green Party leader was partnering with the great do-nothing environment minister, then-Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion, in the "Red Green coalition", the Green Party has touted climate change as the most important reason to vote Green.

But how serious is the Green Party on fighting climate change? Perhaps not as seriously as one may think.

At 21:33 of the following video, May lays out the Green Party's policy on marijuana:

"When you look at the World Health Organization information on marijuana, from a health point of view compared to cigarettes or alcohol, you do not have as strong a case to ban marijuana as you do to ban cigarettes or alcohol.

Prohibition is not working, it's resulting in a distortion of our law-enforcement resources toward something that does not represent the health threat. But,\ it's fuelling organized crime. It's creating very dangerous grow-ops.

So by legalizing, taxing, regulating and encouraging Canadians not to get involved with marijuana the same way we say 'don't drink too much, don't smoke cigarettes'. It's a failed policy we're on now, and our approach is, frankly, very practical."

But how practical is the Green Party's approach to marijuana? Really? Especially as it pertains to their #1 priority of fighting climate change?

As it turns out, not very.

According to a study produced by Evan Mills, PhD entitled "Energy Up in Smoke", indoor marijuana production is actually one of the biggest unidentified contributors to climate change.

How big a contributor is it? When compared to the Alberta oil sands, indoor marijuana production in the state of California has half the carbon footprint of the oilsands. To make matters even more remarkable, California represents only 1/5 of the total indoor marijuana production in the United States.

It speaks for itself, especially when one considers that Canada's indoor marijuana grow-ops -- which are more energy-intensive due to the colder climate -- are not included in the figures.

So how serious is the Green Party about fighting climate change? If its policy on marijuana is any indication, the answer is: not serious enough to give up their reefer.

The oilsands they'd love to shut down, even if they don't publicly come out and say it. But the two-pounds-of-CO2-per-joint vice of the Canadians they desperately want to vote for them? Apparently, they'll take a pass on that.

The Green Party's Plan: Tax the Shit Out of Everyone, Spend the Shit Out of It

Green Party leader wants to tax-and-spend Canada into economic oblivian

Yesterday Elizabeth May introduced the Green Party's platform in Toronto, just a day before Prime Minister Stephen Harper released the Conservative Party platform. Also in Toronto.

There must be something comforting about proposing a platform that you know you will never, absolutely ever, have to worry about implementing. Something that breeds an artificial sense of confidence.

May's proposed plan is basically a high-tax spending plan that would literally destroy jobs in one parts of the country to fund pogey in other parts.

Central to the Green Party platform is a $6.5 billion corporate tax hike and a carbon tax. The corporate tax hike would be used to fund $3.5 billion in "green friendly" infrastructure projects, while the carbon tax would be used to fund cuts to Employment Insurance and Canada Pension Plan contributions.

Which, frankly, is a deeply confusing policy. Simply cutting EI contributions doesn't actually produce any additional funds to pay out to unemployed Canadians -- and there would be unemployed Canadians by the thousands after the carbon tax successfully decimated the energy industries of the country -- nor would it even stopgap the CPP's unfunded liabilities, let alone provide more funds to pay out in pension benefits.

To make the platform even more mind-blogging, the Green Party tax plan would actually put Canadians in the west out of work while funding Canadians in regions wrought with unemployment -- like the Maritimes -- to just stay home.

This is before a carbon tax drives up the cost of everything Canadians consume.

Regardless of what the Green Party may think business should do, business typically isn't in the habit of absorbing the increased costs of its inputs. Those costs get passed along to consumers. Under a carbon tax, this would happen at an economically-crippling rate.

Canadians got this when they overwhelmingly rejected then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion's "Green Shift" in 2008. Apparently May didn't.

Then again, Elizabeth May and the Green Party don't need to worry about ever having to implement this policy. It's basically far-left boilerplate to attract a few extra votes to the party.

This is why, regardless of whether or not May manages to get into the televised leaders' debate, nobody really takes the Green Party seriously.

The Deeper Perversity of Greenpeace China

In Ethical Oil, Ezra Levant finds the soft, vulnerable underbelly of a group that considers itself a world-class environmentalist rabble-rouser: Greenpeace China.

For a group that has prided itself on the ability to produce dramatic and stirring images -- small boats bobbing over calamitous waves while confronting gargantuan whaling ships, massive banners hung from flare stacks at Fort McMurray oilsands sites -- Greenpeace's relationship toward China has been remarkably docile.

As revealed by Levant -- well, perhaps Levant simply reminds readers more than revealing anything -- Greenpeace China, in order to simply exist at the mercy of an oppressive regime, must continually praise what it calls "progress" from China on environmental issues.

Yet, as part one of China reveals, China's environmental record is far from sparkling.

The rush to industrialize China at a rate faster than any previous in human history has led to environmental and human health disasters unimagined anywhere else in the world. In some places, toxic water has transformed cancer rates that were once believed to be one in 100,000 to one in 100 (although, to be entirely fair, some of the jump could be due to increased rates of detection as opposed to new cancers).

The images presented by Chinese activists in China are startling, and make anything produced by the most extreme anti-oilsands critics (such as "mutant fish" that are not actually mutated).

In fact, while China's environment brings cancer and death to so many of its citizens, Greenpeace China spends the bulk of its time complaining about recycling western celphones and disposable chopsticks.

To make matters worse, Chinese environmentalists who are not prepared to simply let these matters go out of deference to employment have very few resources available to them. Chinese law practically forbids suing the government, as lawyers are instructed that their prime goal is to ensure the continuation of the Communist Party political order... even if the communist economic order has long since been abandoned.

As badly as a lot of activists want to make the Fort McMurray oilsands the focus of the world's environmentalist rage, China is a much more dangerous polluter. As the film reveals, acid rain originating from sulphur dioxide emissions in China fall in Japan, Korea and probably Russia and India as well.

Yet Greenpeace refuses to drop the kid gloves with China.

Perhaps Ezra Levant is right: environmentalists love to pick on the oilsands because Canadians are so obliging as targets.

James Cameron, Avatar and the Craziness of Globalization Studies

It must be wonderfully liberating to study in a field such as Globalization Studies, where ideologically-soothing rhetoric so often tends to supplant facts.

Globalization studies tends to boil nearly any problem down to two basic themes: capitalism and racism, typically with very few facts -- if any at all -- offered to support them.

A typical case is an essay being distributed by University of Lethbridge Globalization Studies professor -- and 9/11 truther-in-residence -- Dr Anthony J Hall.

In one such essay, entitled "Avatar Meets the Bowl With One Spoon", Hall suggests that the brutal treatment of the Na'vi in the film is comparable to the treatment of aboriginal communities in Alberta's Athabaska region.

Fortunately for Hall, his discipline seems like it doesn't require a discussion of the facts. If it did, Hall would have to admit that the pertinent facts don't support his argument.

Hall writes:

"Huge amounts of energy and fresh water are required to extract fossil fuels from the bogs of the arctic watershed. While the profits from this activity enliven the urban cultures of, for instance, Calgary, Houston, Dallas, and Beijing, the liabilities in terms of high rates of cancer and the loss of indigenous political economies are borne disproportionately by the Cree and Dene peoples of the region."

A statement like this is so rife with error and counter-factuality that it's hard to know where to begin.

First off, the economic activity derived from oil sands development development also benefits aboriginal communities in the Athabasca regions. They benefit not only from direct revenue from royalties collected from oilsands operations on their land, not only from related businesses operated by local First Nations, but also in terms of aboriginal employment.

Moreover, Hall ignores key portions of Alberta Health Service's report on Fort Chipewyan that notes that the communities' rates of cancer are actually within natural variation, and could simply appear elevated due to increased rates of detection.

Moreover, a key indicator of an environmental cause to elevated rates of cancer is not present in Fort Chipewyan -- notably, the lack of elevated cancer rates in children.

This merely deals with the factual/conceptual errors in Hall's essay. It isn't the only area in which it suffers.

It also suffers from the presence of a key logical fallacy: the false equivalency.

As Avatar unfolds, it becomes clear that the kinds of abuses perpetrated by the RDA mining company are possible because there seems to be no legally-recognized sovereignty over Pandora. No government holds any jurisdiction over it. It is, for the purposes of human legality, a lawless planet.

The situation in Alberta is not even remotely equivalent. Companies operating in the Athabasca region are subject to multiple levels of jurisdiction. They are subject to the jursidction of Canadian law, Albertan law, as well as the restrictions and requirements imposed by First Nations on whose land they operate.

This isn't to say that there aren't any issues related to legal jurisdiction anywhere in Alberta. The ongoing state of affairs regarding the Lubicon Cree, where oil development proceeded without a settlement of the treaty status of the group -- who have never signed a treaty with the government of Canada -- remains legally intolerable.

But this is not the situation in Fort McMurray, where local Cree and Dene populations have frequently asserted their jurisdictional rights, and have received the cooperation of the companies working on their land.

In short, the scenario in Avatar, with Na'vi being swept aside by overwhelming military power, and the scenario in Fort McMurray, wherein aboriginal communities have benefited from the cooperation of oilsands developers, are not nearly the same.

Dr Anthony J Hall is fortunate that he works in an academic field where rhetoric consistently out-muscles fact. His theories may be accepted by the remarkably-insular academic circles in which he travels, but it won't find traction in a more rigourous intellectual environment.

Is Hindsight 20/20 in the 11th Hour?

Released in 2007 and written/produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, the 11th Hour is essentially a follow-up to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

Like An Inconvenient Truth, the 11th Hour focuses mostly on fear-mongering, trotting out the same old litany of environmental abuses (many of them entirely valid) in order to terrify viewers into supporting the agenda of climate change lobbyists.

Amidst the apocalyptic fear-mongering, Leonardo DiCaprio offers a surprisingly intriguing thesis: that what his film insists is an impending environmental armageddon is actually an unintended consequence of the design humankind planned for the future ever since the human mind perceived the notion of the future.

The Eleventh Hour begs the question of, had humankind had 20/20 foresight at any point in its history, would we have done anything differently?

The obvious answer to this question is yes. If humankind could have together avoided the Cold War or the two World Wars, one would have to imagine it would.

But as it pertains to the environment, one has to imagine that humankind would like numerous missteps back as well. As DiCaprio notes, many environmental catastrophes are not isolated incidents, but very much consequences of how things were done by design.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred as an unexpected consequence of oil producers preferring the speed and comparative low cost of transporting oil via tanker ships to the safety of a pipeline. Even pipelines can be subject to unexpected sabotage when they are run above ground and left vulnerable.

Even in terms of human ecology humankind likely would have rethought the use of materials such as asbestos or lead-based paint if humankind had only been blessed with 20/20 foresight -- consider it something of a "special sense" like David Suzuki speaks of.

Of course humankind has not been blessed with 20/20 foresight. In fact, humankind would be fortunate if its foresight was even 50/50.

A more prescient question is whether or not humankind has -- or can even be expected to have -- 20/20 hindsight on the eve of a predicted environmental apocalypse.

Even deeper questions linger about the extent to which the predicted apocalypse is being exaggerated. Such luminaries of the environmental movement as Al Gore have admitted that many of the claims in his Inconvenient Truth were exaggerated beyond whatever truths (however inconvenient) they could impart.

More recently, the Climategate emails leaked from East Anglia University's Hadley Climate Research Unit have demonstrated that not only have supporters of the man-made climate change hypothesis tailored the peer review process for their own benefit, but have also suppressed their own private doubts about the conclusiveness of their own science.

An illuminating comment comes from David Orr, who peddles the "tipping point" theory (not even the most clever bit of fear mongering devised by this crowd) and notes that humankind is "losing control of the climate".

The problem, of course, is that humanity has never controlled the climate. Such an act is literally incomprehensible.

But the truth of the film seems to be that these particular individuals aren't simply interesting in controlling climate, they're interested in controlling culture.

Many of the commentators in The 11th Hour raise the same old predictable left-wing complaints, and treat the fight against climate change as the means by which they'll culturally transform the world.

In other words, many of these commentators seem to be treating climate change as a weapon in a cultural war.

The ultimate solution, the film's talking heads insist, is to "fundamentally redesign the basis of human design".

This really isn't such a bad idea. But given the film's premise, these people also have to wake up to the reality that if human foresight needs to be fundamentally challenged, people have every right to ask these individuals if their specific vision for the future is the right one for humankind to follow.

Derailing (and Re-Railing) The Train of Public Virtue

Time for the Conservative Party to offer its own model of public virtue

Writing in an op/ed in the Ottawa Citizen, David Warren offers his take on Barry Cooper's recent opus It's the Regime, Stupid!.

Cooper is one of the better-kept secrets of Canadian political science: a paleo-conservative with one eye on Canada's past, another on its future, and his finger on the pulse of Canada's present.

Cooper's book offers a scathing critique of Laurenti-o-centric politics and where it has led the country:

"Looked at from another angle, we are the curious aggregate of 'two founding cultures' -- the combination of French Canadian nationalist whining and extortion, with the old English Canadian Loyalist junction and anti-American malice, in a kleptomanic welfare state -- fuelled by revenue appropriated from Western Canadian resources.

This is not exactly my way of looking at post-war Canada, and perhaps an over-simplification of Cooper's, but there's a lot of truth in it all the same. A 'regime,' which we may fairly associate with the Liberal party (though spread through other parties by such mechanisms as the 'sacred trust' of our dysfunctional medicare system), has embedded itself in Canadian life, in the form of a self-interested and self-serving federal bureaucracy of extraordinary size.

The notion that Canada consists centrally of ourselves -- the Laurentianistas -- plus imperial extensions east, north, and west, would come very close to being the irritant that has inspired Cooper to produce his string of pearls on Canadian politics, the most memorable of which before the book now published was entitled, Deconfederation (1991), co-written with David Bercuson. It was a book that proposed to call Quebec's separatist bluff, by sketching out the benefits to the Rest of Canada over and above the transaction costs, if Quebec would only leave."

Cooper's and Bercuson's argument circulated around the notion of the politics of public virtue. Although they argued that the politics of public virtue -- leaing Canada inexorably into the era of the welfare state -- actually originated with John Diefenbaker, who they identify as the first Prime Minister to govern with social justice as a central preoccupation (although the traces of this notion can be identified earlier at the provincial level, in the Saskatchewan government of Tommy Douglas and Alberta government of -- believe it or not -- William Aberhart), it was the fight against Quebec separatism that truly entrenched those ideals as central to Canadian governance.

The Liberals struggles to find ways to fund their efforts to use democratic socialism to soften the demand for Quebec sovereignty often led to ham-fisted attempts to suck revenue out of the Western provinces, and often became as big a threat to national unity as anything imagined by Rene Levesque or Luicen Bouchard.

The growing public bureaucracy became a symbol to the west of the country financing Liberal attempts to pander to Quebec separatism at Western Canada's expense.

The election of (briefly) Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney as Prime Minister did little to stem this slide itno a bureaucratic and self-interested state. By the time Paul Martin -- who at times seemed to possess the will to turn the tide -- his party's own excesses in twisting Canadian governance to their own benefit finally bit him.

The election of Stephen Harper resulted not only from the nadir of the sense of entitlement born out of the Liberal party's vision of the politics of public virtue, but also of a slowly-emerging distaste for that particular status quo, and a desire for real change.

But, just as the Liberal vision of the politics of public virtue was fraught with peril, so is Warren's view of how Stephen Harper should proceed:

"My own view, that Harper's political strategy is simply to remain in power for as long as possible, governing with as much common sense as circumstances will allow, until the hegemony of the Liberal party recedes into memory, would probably answer to Cooper's requirements. Harper is a transitional figure; not the new regime but the man who allows one to emerge over time. He is astute in his grasp of his own limitations.

In particular, he must stay in power until the threat has passed of the Liberals replacing their old divide-and-conquer 'national unity' fraud, with a new divide-and-conquer environmentalist fraud. The global warming hysteria -- seized upon by bureaucrats all over the world as the means to advance and consolidate the Nanny State -- is itself receding. We must wait it out."

Warren's view seems to be that the Conservative party should simply outwait the allegedly waning surge of environmentalism. But this may is an ultimately short-sighted view.

The enthusiasm for the apocalyptic view of environmentalism may indeed be waning -- it's usually difficult to tell for certain.

But to pretend that the Liberal party couldn't profit politically from a new environmental focus is naive. Even if Canadians stop fearing an environmental apocalypse, the environment is still central to the issue of quality of life.

This is the conservative angle on the environmental issue. Even if apocalyptic zealots are outraged at the very idea that an environmental catastrophe may not be as imminent as activist scientists have insisted it is.

The other issue with Warren's thesis is the notion of Stephen Harper needing to remain in power for as long as possible.

The strength of Cooper's thesis is that it reflects a change in the purpose of Canadian government. Retaining power for power's own sake -- or even out-waiting political changes that may favour his party -- doesn't reflect these changes away from aelf-serving politics of public virtue and toward more responsible and accountable government.

Harper achieved this by doing what Tom Flanagan described as "tightening the screws" on government -- not only through a program of tax cuts, but also by trimming old Liberal party-era social engineering projects, as embodied by the court challenges program and by the ideological direction of the Status of Women.

Some would have expected that Harper's re-adjustment of the Royal Commission for the Status of Women -- as well as suggestions that Harper has treated women as a "left-wing fringe group" -- it seems that female voters are continually softening toward Harper.

The termination of the Liberal agenda of social engineering via various pet projects doesn't seem nearly as threatening to many Canadians as left-wing Canadians would have the rest of us believe.

Last but not least, dismissing national unity and environmentalism as fraudulent is intellectually perilous. Canada came within less than a percentage point of breaking up during the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum because the Liberal government of Jean Chretien was inattentive to, and bungled, the national unity file. Not because concerns regarding national unity are fraudulent.

Brian Lee Crowley has recently noted (and Denis Stairs noted before him), demographic shifts within Quebec will soon take the teeth out of Quebec separatism. This will change the form the national unity debate takes in Canada, but it will not lay the issue to rest.

Likewise environmentalism is not fraudulent. Whether the action taken on preserving the environment is taken to head off an apocalypse or is taken simply to improve the quality of life of Canadians, the issue of the environment is crucial.

The Conservative party needs to stop short of abolishing the politics of public virtue, and instead offer Canadians an alternative to the tired version of it to which they had once resigned themselves.

A conservative version of the politics of public virtue will very likely share the most compelling elements of the Liberal version. The difference, of course, should be that the conservative model shouldn't rely on state action to achieve that vision, but rather make it possible for citizens to accomplish those goals on their own -- even if the state provides some help along the way.

Green Battle Shaping Up in BC

Liberals nominate environmental researcher in Saanich-Gulf Islands

Presuming that the Green party elects Elizabeth May as its candidate in Saanich-Gulf Islands -- which, considering that Stuart Hertzog has seemingly admitted he doesn't stand a chance in the nomination contest, seems almost inevitable -- the stage seems to have been set for a battle over environmental policy in that riding.

The Liberal party has selected Renee Hetherington, a multi-disciplinary environmental researcher at the University of Victoria, as their candidate for the riding.

"My background is very diverse and so is this riding," Hetherington explained.

Indeed, much of her commentary on her research -- "temporal, spatial, and cultural impacts of fluctuating climate on paleoenvironments and human evolution, migration, and behavioural adaptability" -- sounds like utter jargon, but the diversity of her work speaks for itself.

As the former executive director of the Sierra Club, May has certainly also addressed a wide diversity of topics in the course of her activist career, as well as her political career as Green party leader.

To Hetherington, the competition between herself and May will be about who can actually be an effective force in Parliament if elected.

"As a potential governing party, we [the Liberals] have the power to effect change," she noted.

Elizabeth May, meanwhile, leads a party that is not terribly likely to effect any kind of change, except by the charity of another political party -- what else was Stephane Dion's decision not to run a Liberal candidate against her in Central Nova but charitable? Likewise, May understands her party is not a potential governing party -- again, her 2008 endorsement of Stephane Dion for Prime Minister attests to that.

The battle between the Liberal party and Green party in Saanich-Gulf Islands is almost certain to be about which party is better poised to be the standard bearer for environmentalism in Canada.

But don't expect a victory in this regard by either party to mean much -- Gary Lunn is still likely to win the election itself.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Woman at Mile Zero - "Renee Hetherington's Nomination Speech

Nothing Blasphemous About Theological Environmentalism

Michael Coren off-base with criticism of United Church

Writing in the Sudbury Star, Bill Steadman takes umbrage with recent remarks by Michael Coren about recent focus by the United Church of Canada on environmental issues.

Coren wrote that "hundreds of thousands have left for evangelical churches where Jesus, rather than the Smart car, is worshipped each Sunday."

In his Toronto Sun column, Coren more specifically takes issue with Mardi Tindal, the Church's new environmentally-minded moderator.

"Do Mardi and her friends not realize just how dated and daft they sound?" Coren asks. "They toss around all of the old cliches like 'new paradigm,' 'participate relationally' and 'safe place' and then wonder why worshippers have abandoned their church quicker than a liberal Christian in a shoe store that has run out of Birkenstocks!"

"While lazy journalists continue to say that the United Church is, 'the largest Protestant denomination in Canada' the truth is that while the church boasts 545,000 adherents, these are mostly paper members and perhaps a third of them actually attend the United Church."

The rest, Coren contends, have abandoned the Church for demoninations that haven't shifted their focus to matters other than singing hymns and passing the collection plate.

"If people want environmental lectures, distorted history about evil Europeans oppressing natives, radical feminism and anti-homophobia workshops they only have to turn on the television," Coren writes. "They go to church to praise God and learn about salvation."

The argument that Coren seems to raise is that commentary on social matters -- and especially left-wing commentary -- are out of place within a Christian church, and that they are somehow polluting the spiritual environment of the Church. That they are, in this particular sense, effectively blasphemous.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

If Coren truly feels threatened by the presence of an environmental message in his Church, some high profile Canadian Christians wouldn't agree with him.

Preston Manning -- a known evangelical Christian -- has long advocated in favour of theocratic environmentalism, a breed of environmentalism born out of a belief in creation care.

At the heart of this idea, which one of Canada's predominant evangelical Christians has taken very deeply to heart, is the idea that mankind has a responsibility to care for God's creation. It's a very compelling reason for many Christians to support environmental conservation and reclaimation.

Manning could never have reached this conclusion about a holy mandate for environmental conservation without being influenced by his religious beliefs. In fact, Manning has made it clear throughout his political career that his religious beliefs were the foundation of his political beliefs and actions.

Bill Streadman's objections to Coren's comments stems from the very same Christian principles of which Manning would remind the arch-conservative scribe -- that being a Christian has as it's fundamental basis a social relationship with the rest of teh world: one wherein Christians are obligated to treat their fellow humanity with generosity, kindness and compassion.

This includes generously helping to ensure that everyone can enjoy a high quality of life, replete with a clean and healthy environment to habitate.

Streadman also notes that, as it regards accusations that politics undermines the religiosity of the United Church's message, the Church would not be alone.

"The truth is, being a follower of Jesus (at least as I read the Bible) has a lot to do with how one treats people, understands human needs and addresses social concerns," Streadman writes. "Jesus himself was accused of being a nonreligious individual for allowing tax collectors, prostitutes, even mothers with young children to be part of his entourage of followers. Heaven forbid."

Coren's concern is legitimate if the United Church begins to promote left-wing political beliefs to the exclusion of any others.

But even then any believers concerned about the influx of left-wing politics in their Church do have two very good options of their own: either make their own political beliefs heard within the Church, or find another.

If many adherents of the United Church choose the latter over the former, that's their choice. And it's the choice of the United Church -- not of Michael Coren -- regarding whether or not they'll worry about it.

For his own part, Bill Steadman doesn't seem to.

Back to Square One for Eco-Opportunists

Van Jones resignation a set-back for cynical environmentalists

In what has turned out to be a spectacular collapse of vetting, Barack Obama's Green Jobs csar, Van Jones, resigned from his office yesterday.

Within Jones' troublesome past was his defense of a known cop killer, racially charged comments about schoolyard shootings and his status as a signatory to a 9/11 "truth" website.

Particularly troublesome in regard to the manner in which Jones was serving the administration were his comments about "maximum and minimum goals" in regard to environmental policy.

"Right now we're saying that we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to some kind of eco-capitalism where at least we aren't fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet," Jones had explained.

"Will that be enough? No it won't be enough," Jones coninued. "We want to go beyond systems of exploitation and oppression altogether."

"Green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society," he explained.

To date, the brazen accusations that Barack Obama is some kind of communist have been nothing short of empty hysteria. But in the specific case of Van Jones, it certainly seems like he's calling for some kind of "incremental communist revolution".

But Jones isn't the first person to allow an ulterior motive for their environmental policies to slip.

Meanwhile, just a few months before the 2008 federal election, which then-Liberal party leader Stephane Dion fought on the back of his Green Shift policy, then-Thunder Bay Rainy River MP Ken Boshcoff let the cat out of the bag when he speculated that the carbon tax could be used to transfer wealth out of oil-producing provinces to the rest of the country.

"The shift will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oilpatch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians," Boshcoff wrote in a blogpost. "Clearly, I feel it would be an expansion of prosperity nationwide. Everybody wants to share in Alberta's good fortune."

Across the Atlantic Ocean in Britain, meanwhile, one finds George Monbiot (the zoologist that Elizabeth May gushed over while divulging the true content of her character).

Monbiot is the author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning. In it, Monbiot essentially argues that unless stopped soon, climate change will enter a self-perpetuating stage.

Before heat, however, he wrote Manifesto for a New World Order, in which he argues in favour of establishing a "World Parliament".

Monbiot is well known to be an advocate of the Kyoto protocol. But just as, for Van Jones environmentalism was just an incrementalist movement toward supplanting capitalism and for Ken Boshcoff the carbon shift was a method of siphoning wealth out of Western Canada, Monbiot's support for Kyoto was simply an incrementalist approach to establishing a precedent for a World Parliament with actual governmental powers.

If individuals like Jones, Boshcoff and Monbiot really considered the allegedly-imminent alleged catastrophe of climate change to be so serious one would suspect that they could at least do a better job of concealing their individual ulterior motives.

What's So Dark About Green Politics?

Peter Foster decries Preston Manning's "turn" to environmentalism

Writing in an op/ed in the Financial Post, Peter Foster seems rather disenchanted with Preston Manning.

Apparently, he just can't figure out Manning's involvement with Sustainable Prosperity, an organization that Foster describes as "a lobby group for radical environmental policies".

Yet when one takes a good look at the page presenting the organization's research, one sees a rather different picture than the one Foster seems to be presenting.

In fact, Manning's involvement with Sustainable Prosperity is nothing new for him. He has long promoted free market environmentalism -- the idea that ownership of property promotes proper care for the environment.

The theory of free market environmentalism simply states that property ownership is an investment. As a result, the owner of that property has an incentive to maintain the value of their investment by ensuring that the property remains in good condition. For home owners, this entails maintenance of the house. For land owners, this entails minimizing the amount of pollution that takes place on their property, and properly cleaning up any pollution that does occur.

As with any market structure, this does entail a certain amount of government intervention.

To the typical hard-core conservative government intervention is generally considered anathema. But these people overlook the fact that, even though economics insists that all people are rational actors, it doesn't necessarily mean that they always act in their best interests, or that of their community.

Where the market fails to self-regulate (as it often does) through business or property owners that fail to percieve their incentive to maintain the value of their investments via proper environmental care, it is the government's responsibility to act.

Interestingly, SP offers several answers to some of Foster's questions. Foster notes the difficulty of pricing carbon under a cap and trade system. SP advocates a hybrid system for carbon pricing, and offers the principles under which carbon could be priced.

Manning's involvement with SP doesn't even represent any kind of sudden change for him. Manning has long been a proponent of theological environmentalism, the idea that religious believers have an obligation to environmentalism via their responsibility to care for their god's creation.

Much of Foster's objections to Sustainable Prosperity seem like a knee-jerk reaction when one considers that Andrew Heintzman is very much a man who has put his money where his mouth is and invested heavily in environmental enterprise.

There's nothing dark about green politics, especially not the manner in which Manning is advancing it.

If anything, Peter Foster should welcome Sustainable Development to the environmental debate, as it provides an alternative in the debate that is much more palatable than the numerous proposals based solely on economically-cripping forms of government intervention (remember Stephane Dion's Green Shift?).

If Preston Manning and Andrew Heintzman are successful in promoting their ideas, not only will it go a long way toward improving the current state of the environment, but it will have given conservatives a much stronger voice in how that is done.

Peter Foster should be happy with that.

Al Gore and the Climate of Extremes

Featured on YouTube via TED Talks, former US Vice President Al Gore speaks about some alarming new signs of global warming.

In the video Gore talks about the alleged spread of oxygen-depleted "dead zones" in the oceans, and about methane emissions from lakes, including a video where some scientists set these methane emissions on fire. He then finishes up by debuting some campaign ads directed against clean coal technology.

Yet as it turns out, Al Gore is not at all a reliable source of information about global warming -- or as alarmists re-term it when challenged about the lack of a demonstrable warming trend, climate change.

Speaking via ForaTV, UN Inter-government Panel on Climate Change member Patrick Michaels demonstrates how quickly Gore's sensationalist rhetoric can be exposed for what it truly is.

It quickly undermines any faith in nearly anything that comes out of the former Vice President's mouth, and reminds viewers that while individuals like Gore want to insist climate change will be the end of the world, and that we should all be extremely terrified of it, there's more afoot than these alarmists would have us realize.

It's difficult to overlook the extent to which climate change alarmism is being treated as a pretext for various political programs.

In Canada, Liberal MP Ken Boschoff let a wealth-transferring agenda slip when talking about Stephane Dion (and Michael Ignatieff's) carbon tax.

George Monbiot has been amongst the most extreme of the alarmists, writing a book that insists that climate change will reach a "point of no return" if not stopped as immediately as possible. Monbiot, who is not a climatologist, had also previously spoken on CBC's Ideas radio program about the need for a global Parliament -- something that legally-binding climate treaties like the Kyoto protocol could arguably (but not necessarily) lead to.

On the other side of the coin there are those who deny climate change outright. As Gore rightly notes, many of them profit from oil and coal -- just as those who profit from oil and coal will rightly note that Gore has a political agenda that is served by climate change alarmism.

It would be foolish to deny that climate change is a problem. At the very least, it would be foolish to deny that there aren't countless other good reasons to reduce carbon emissions and other industrial emissions -- air quality being paramount among them.

But to allow Al Gore and his extremist cohorts to terrify people ignores both the tendency of these people to promote alarmism at the expense of scientific fact, and the political agendas they seek to promote.

Patrick Michaels is absolutely right. People need to stop feeding the climate of extremes.

The Political Power of Music

Russel Simmons promotes political power of hip hop

When Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele suggested the GOP needed to reenvision itself in a hip hop mold many people assumed he was either crazed or simply delusional.

After all, hip hop and the Republican party could be expected to mix about as well as oil and water.

But hip hop may be the most inherently political genre music has to offer. Because of its uniquely political character, hip hop provides political organizers with invaluable opportunities to mobilize grassroots urban youths -- a demographic that not only is becoming more politically active, but one that Republicans are practically entirely alienated from.

Russel Simmons provides an example of precisely how powerful hip hop can be as a political organizational force. His efforts to mobilize the hip hop community in support of environmental causes, something he plans to accomplish through his America's Greenest Campus campaign, promise to be nothing short of revolutionary.

"[This campaign] is an educational tool and an empowerment vehicle. People don’t understand what it is to lighten their footprint, what steps to take," Simmons explains. "So if we give them the simple steps and we tell them exactly how much it affects the environment if they make certain changes—being a vegetarian, doing other things that make a dramatic difference in how much weight they carry in the world—people want to know that. When they realize that by changing simple things they can make a difference, it’s an empowerment vehicle."

While this is an encouraging idea, Simmons fails to exercise some crucial critical thinking in regards to his own ideas. His intent to utilize hip hop -- which in addition to being music's most inherently political genre has also become music's most inherently materialistic genre -- in favour of environmentalism contradicts hip hop's consumer-driven nature.

But Simmons is also right in noting the impact that hip hop has on consumer culture. Convincing rappers to embrace environmentally-conscious products will go a long way toward improving their marketability.

"The biz is depending on hip-hop to pick which color diamond is popular," Simmons explains. "The only way [the Maybach] beats Phantom Rolls Royce is to get rappers to choose it. Tommy Hilfiger’s praying that hip-hop discovers him again. So is Coca-Cola; [they’re] worried what hip-hop says versus Pepsi."

Simmons admits that he doesn't currently have a big-name rapper he can point to as the franchise player for his environmentalist hip hop movement.

But even if rappers aren't necessarily becoming more environmentally conscious just yet, they are becoming wealthier on an ongoing basis.

The ever-increasing wealth of hip hop artists provides an open window for Republicans to appeal to hip hop artists through fiscally conservative policies -- particularly those promising lower levels of taxation. The biggest barrier remaining to Michael Steele remaking the GOP under a hip hop prototype is the social values projected by many of those currently being allowed to portray themselves as the Republican party's standard bearers.

As politically revolutionary music, one can rest assured that few rappers will publicly support a political party that is at least perceived to promote socially regressive or racially hostile policies.

Michael Steele's plan to infuse a raptivist base within the Republican party will require him to embrace Meghan McCain's plans to moderate the GOP. The potential for growth following such a radical course of action is immense -- but first the party would have to endure significant growing pains.

Michael Ignatieff's Brave New Take on Unity

Ignatieff insists supporting the oil sands supports national unity

For years, federal politicians in Canada had a one-track mind in regards to national unity: please Quebec at all costs.

This view was particularly and logically typical of Liberal leaders, who have needed to maintain their strength in Quebec (along with Ontario) in order to remain formidable. For years being strong in Quebec has promised to make the difference between the Liberals governing and sinking to third party status.

Michael Ignatieff seems to have a new strategy toward national unity: appeal to Western Canada, particularly Alberta.

Speaking to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, Ignatieff insisted that the oil sands don't merely benefit Alberta, but rather benefit the entirety of Canada.

"The oilsands are an integral part of the future of Canada," Ignatieff insisted. "No other country in the word would toss away this advantage."

Ignatieff also believes that Canadians are looking at the oilsands in a shortsighted manner. "We're operating this thing like it was the Klondike, and it's not the Klondike. We're going to be there for a century or more," he added.

Not that Ignatieff doesn't understand the environmental issues confronting the oilsands, as underscored in a recent issue of National Geographic.

"We need to be able to stand up for the oilsands and ask the oil industry to do better. These communities need to become environmentally sustainable, but they also need to become socially sustainable."

Ignatieff has suggested that the federal government should match the $2 billion recently pledged by the Alberta government to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the tarsand projects. He's also pledged his Liberal party to guard Alberta's interests in any national greenhouse gas reduction scheme.

"We will be watching in Opposition to make sure [a cap-and-trade system] won't hurt Alberta," he pledged. "We need to work with the industry, and not against the industry."

Ignatieff's support of the oil sands isn't a sudden change of policy on his part. Ignatieff has defended the oilsands on several occasions, including in Quebec.

"The stupidest thing you can do [is] to run against an industry that is providing employment for hundreds of thousands of Canadians, and not just in Alberta, but right across the country," Ignatieff told a Montreal audience in January.

According to Ignatieff, another good reason to support the oil sands is the influence that gives Canada over its number one trading partner.

"We provide more oil to the United States than Saudi Arabia. That changes everything," he continued. "It means that when the prime minister of Canada goes into the White House, he gets listened to, in ways that Canadian prime ministers have not been listened to before. We're not the nice little friendly northern cousin. They can't run their economy without us."

Back in Alberta, Ignatieff also took some time out to address how Stephane Dion's Green Shift was recieved in Western Canada. "I think you can't win elections if you are adding to the input costs of a farmer ...or a trucker," Ignatieff said. "You got to work with the grain of Canadians and not against them."

Of course, Ignatieff didn't mention that the central plank of Dion's Green Shift was actually Ignatieff's own carbon tax.

If Ignatieff is true to his words, Western Canadians may finally be able to trust the Liberal party on the topic of the national economy. "Alberta is a valued treasured part of our federation," he said in January. "Never pit one region of the country against the other when you develop economic policy."

But as Kelly McParland notes on the Naational Post's Full Comment blog, Ignatieff is accepting his fair share of risks in pledging his support for the oilsands.

For one thing, he risks alienating the environmental demographic that Stephane Dion worked so hard to connect with.

But as it regards national unity, reconnecting with the West is a positive step in the right direction.

This is not only good for Canada, but it will almost certainly turn out to be good for the Liberal party. If Ignatieff can convince Western Canadians he's sincere, the Liberal party may finally get a second look from many out West.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Montreal Simon - "Michael Ignatieff and the Clean Dirty Oil"

Michael Stickings - "The Rise of Michael Ignatieff"

Far and Wide - "It Is What It Is"

The Riddle of Theological Environmentalism

In a recent post at Pharyngula, PZ Myers is excited by a recent Nature Video Channel video featuring Sir David Attenborough in which he blames the Bible for fomenting an attitude that validates environmental destruction.

"The influence of the book of Genesis which says that the lord God said 'go forth and multiply' to Adam and Eve and that the natural world is there for you to dominate," Attenborough explains. "'You have dominion over the animals and plants of the world,' and that basic notion that the world is there for us and if it doesn't actually serve our purposes it's dispensible, that has produced devestation of vast areas of the Earth's surface."

"Of course it's a great oversimplification," Attenborough admits. "But that's why Darwinism and the fact of evolution is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devestation of so much of the Earth."

Naturally Myers, who has never heard a criticism of religion that he didn't enjoy, is quite enthused about Attenborough's comments.

But as Attenborough himself admits, his comments are a great oversimplification of the matter. After all, one of the most important elements of religion is that of interpretation.

As it turns out, a great many Christians interpret the Book of Genesis very differently. While some very much do seem to subscribe to the Coulter-esque "take it, rape it, it's yours" school of thought, there are many Christians who believe that their religious faith obligates them to care for the Earth.

Such is the attitude toward the environment taken by organizations such as Care for Creation, a religious environmental group that brings together Christians, Muslims and Jews to meet the group's goal of better caring for the environment.

This is also the motivation behind the recent publication of the the Green Bible, a version of the Bible in which scriptural verses referring to God's love of his creation and God's commandment that the Earth be cared for are highlighted in Green.

Approximately 1000 pages of the book -- printed with soy-based ink on recycled paper with a cotton cover -- are duly highlighted.

Contrary to Sir Attenborough's insistence that the book of Genesis, in particular, is responsible for validating environmental destruction, a significant portion of Genesis is highlighted in green.

While someone who wants badly enough to find justification for careless exploitation of the environment may find it in Genesis, those who pay close attention will find commandments toward caring for the environment as well.

Ironically, the book of Revelations also features numerous passages that promote care for the environment. This is ironic because many Christians who have rejected the Green Bible have questioned the need to care for a world that, according to particular interpretations of the Bible, will only be destroyed anyway.

Even if the eventual destruction of the Earth isn't treated as a rationale for rejecting a biblical focus on environmental protection there is still the matter of priorities. Some conservative Christians have argued that saving souls is more important than saving the Earth -- although they clearly overlook the need for a healthy planet for the next generation (also representing the next generation of souls, depending on the nuances of one's own religious views).

In Canada, the theological environmentalist movement has found some influential leaders. In particular Preston Manning has been instrumental in promoting the Bible as a book that encourages environmental conservation.

This matter isn't nearly so simple as Sir Attenborough describes it. For those intent on believing that the Bible justifies environemtnal destruction, they will find it. But for those who want to believe that the Bible encourages proper stewardship of the environment, they will find that as well. Often, they will support for these differing view points in the same parts of the Bible.

This is why theological environmentalism is a riddle. But like any great riddle, it is one that must be solved in order for the wisdom it entails to be enjoyed.

Unfortunately, the search for this solution won't be abbetted by individuals like PZ Myers who would rather content themselves to chortle triumphantly.

Preston Manning: Christians Have Responsibility to Environment

Manning makes pitch for theological environmentalism

Speaking at a recent conference at Calgary's Rocky Mountain College, Preston Manning sent a message to Albertan Christians:

He wants them to get involved in the environmental debate.

Manning seems to think that the environmental debate -- up to and including the purported "climate crisis" -- could benefit from having a distinct Christian voice join the debate.

"We've got a window of time now to reflect on how we should be responsibly developing our resources," Manning mused. "And we as Christians can bring a distinctive approach to acting as mediators which is rooted in our faith."

But Manning reminds Christians that they don't have the option of attempting to remain neutral in the debate.

"Jesus communicates constantly between God and man. As a mediator, He sacrifices His own interests to bring the parties together. He's not an aloof third party weighing the arguments of both sides," he continued.

Manning's model -- one could think of it as a form of theological enivronmentalism -- involves two principles: "creation care" and responsible energy development.

Manning's notion of "creation care" is a fairly simple one: Christians, who believe that the Earth is God's creation, have a responsibility to ensure that the Earth is well taken care of.

This comes a long way from Ann Coulter's "Earth is yours. Here, take it. Rape it. It's yours."

The other principle of Manning's theological environmentalism embodies considerably more detail. Developing energy responsibly must go far beyond the development of existing resources. It must also mandate the improvement of energy efficiency, as well as the development of alternative -- renewable -- energy sources.

Intriguingly, Manning seems to have endorsed a policy similar to Stephane Dion's Green shift carbon tax.

"Don't call it a tax, call it a price and don't tell people that it's revenue-neutral," Manning warned. "Be honest. Tell people it's going to cost you, but then convince them that putting a value on clean air and clean water is worth it."

In other words, Manning, like many economists, favours putting a price on carbon emissions, although he seems to draw the line short of rearranging Canada's tax structure around such a notion, and would remind any politicians willing to champion such an initiative to be prepared to take the inevitable political risk of being honest about it -- something Stephane Dion and the Liberal party declined to do.

Manning has also drawn attention to a significant generation gap in those who understand the importance of mediating between the environment and the economy.

"In boardrooms and cabinet rooms, those under 35 already have the environment and the economy integrated," Manning concluded. "The older generation has a lot of difficulty grasping that reality. We have to encourage and support our children as they start to lead the way."

Which makes a certain amount of sense. Considering the argument that each generation only holds the Earth in trust for the next generation, it only makes sense for people younger and younger to lead this debate.