During his high-profile appearance on YouTube this week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was asked if his government is willing to take strong action to combat global warming.
In response, he reminded his Internet audience that Canada is an emerging energy superpower, “but we want to make sure that we are a clean energy superpower.
“That's why we are investing in things like carbon capture and storage. We have the green infrastructure fund in our economic stimulus program, we have a series of what we call ecoEnergy initiatives to encourage the development of new technology and energy efficiency.”
All of that is true, although the PM failed to mention that ecoEnergy, which channels funds to renewable sources such as solar and wind power, will expire next year, and this month's federal budget contains no sign of a replacement.
Carbon capture and storage, meanwhile, has been dismissed by environmentalists as little more than a subsidy for the oil and gas industry. “It's a dead-end technology,” says University of Victoria scientist Andrew Weaver, a world leader in climate modelling, “that is very clearly not a solution to anything.”
As well as ending ecoEnergy (the United States now spends, per capita, 18 times as much as Canada does on developing renewable resources), the new budget has cut federal investment in climate research.
Clearly the Conservatives feel it's safe now to disengage from the battle against climate change – a battle they didn't want to wage in the first place. But are they wise to do so?
Mr. Harper came to power four years ago fully intending to dismantle programs aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. The outgoing Liberals, he said, had set unrealistic targets and then failed to meet them. His government was not about to offer lip service to a crusade that Conservatives deemed overblown and out of step with the folks on Main Street.
A few months later, the folks on Main Street told the Prime Minister that he had them pegged all wrong.
Al Gore was on screen proclaiming his “inconvenient truth,” Canada was experiencing weird winter weather, and by January, 2007, the polls said that climate change had become the number one concern of Canadians, outdistancing such staples as the economy and health care.
So, with all the zeal of a conscript, Mr. Harper joined the fight against global warming. He replaced his environment minister and scrapped the first attempt at an environmental policy in favour of a plan to cut carbon emissions by 2020. The move was panned by environmentalists but seemed to please ordinary Canadians.
WHEN THE TIDE TURNED
Then the economy began to slide. Anxiety about lost jobs trumped the angst over climate change and, by June, 2008, the polls showed Canadians were more worried about the price of gas than the output of industrial carbon.
That fall, the markets tanked, and Mr. Harper was forced to turn his attention to fiscal matters. As the federal deficit swelled to $56-billion, measures to cope with climate change just didn't seem so important any more. The Conservatives were able to settle into an environmental groove far more suited to their traditional philosophy.
So, as other countries tackled the downturn by pouring stimulus money into renewable energy, Canada invested in municipal infrastructure.
Then came what some people like to call “Climate-gate.” Pirated e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain suggested that some of the research underpinning global-warming theories had been fudged. The scandal – despite the cries from researchers that the “smoking guns” were words taken out of context – further diminished the clout of those urging action.
Mr. Harper attended, reluctantly, the big climate-change conference in Copenhagen in November, but stood firm on his position that Canada had little room to toughen its commitments to reduce emissions.
Now the budget has made it official – and the political roof hasn't exactly fallen in.
But even if concern about
climate change has diminished, it has not disappeared – especially among Canadians outside Mr. Harper's support base, the ones he needs to attract if he's ever to win his coveted majority.
