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'You first' stance on climate change killing Canada's credibility

By: Nicholas Hirst

19/11/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 15

What is it about climate change that political leaders around the world fail to understand? Huge international hopes were placed on the summit in Copenhagen next month. Few will be realized.

Canada's environment minister, Jim Prentice, has voiced what all other senior international leaders are saying: there may be some kind of accord reached at Copenhagen to address climate change, but any move towards a comprehensive treaty went by the boards some time ago.

So Arctic ice melts, the polar bears move south, tinder dry forests burn and the world leaders, like Nero of ancient Rome, twiddle their fingers. Not even the recession has come to the world's aid. Usually, during recessions, industrial emissions of carbon dioxide gas drop. Scientists say that carbon dioxide is the most important of the "greenhouse gases" that serve to trap heat in the atmosphere. Last year, however, carbon dioxide emissions continued to rise largely because of the output from the still-growing Chinese economy.

U.S. President Barack Obama has been doing his best to rally the environmental troops. After meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Obama said that while a treaty might not be possible, a "comprehensive agreement" might.

While no one doubts Obama's sincerity and willingness to combat climate change, the U.S. has still to introduce new federal regulations. Prentice is waiting for the U.S. to formulate its policies before Canada brings in its own.

We could go on like this forever.

Why? It's not as if world leaders are incapable of responding to real threats to the globe's existence. In the 1980s, when scientists discovered worrying, growing holes in the ozone layer of the atmosphere, international leaders understood the danger. The ozone layer traps up to 99 per cent of the ultra-violet light from the sun. The small portion that gets through is what we use sunblock to protect ourselves from. The growing holes in the ozone in the 1980s threatened our very existence. If the ozone layer were destroyed, humans would simply fry.

Scientific research showed that the deterioration of the ozone layer was being caused by chemicals known as CFCs. They were used widely in aerosol sprays and refrigeration. In Montreal in 1987, world leaders met and agreed to ban CFCs, replacing them with a less damaging chemical. In 1989, the protocol came into effect.

Why similar and equally draconian measures have not been put into effect for climate change makes you wonder. The extrapolations on what happens if we do nothing are by now well known. The world will heat up. Oceans will rise. Coastal populations will be threatened and our ability to feed ourselves will weaken.

The danger appeared to be understood more than a decade ago with the signing of the Kyoto protocol that pledged industrialized nations to reduce their carbon emissions. Some countries, like the UK, did so. The U.S. didn't sign. Canada signed and proceeded to ignore the goals it had set for itself.

Copenhagen was supposed to put the reduction of carbon emissions back on track. There is no clear agreement on how to do that. The conclusion I come to is that neither the political leaders nor the people they represent truly believe that the threat is serious. The majority of the world's climate scientists believe that climate change is happening. But the public doesn't and if they do, they are not sure anything can be done about it. The argument over whether man-made pollution is really changing the climate never seems settled. Only last month, the BBC, normally a staunch believer in climate change, published an article by its climate correspondent Paul Hudson under the heading Whatever happened to global warming? The report stated that the world average temperatures had peaked in 1998. Scientists have responded by saying that the long-term trend is still rising and that models predict that as carbon dioxide continues to increase so will temperatures.

I have said it before and I'll say it again: the threat of climate change is so great that we cannot afford to trust that it won't happen. The long-term evidence is that it is happening and we have to do everything in our power to mitigate its effects.

Canada's ability to affect the world's output of carbon is limited. Our country's own emissions are less than two per cent of the world total. Our moral authority, however, is not measured by our output. Our governments, both Liberal and Tory, have been saying "you first" for far too long. Canada used to punch above its weight on the world stage. That's not been the case for many years. On climate change we have no moral authority at all. It's time Canada stopped thinking the climate was a problem for others and took a leadership role. It's not going to happen, but you can live in hope.

Nicholas Hirst is CEO of Winnipeg-based television and film producer Original Pictures Inc.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 19, 2009 A15

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15 Commentscomment icon

Darsh

Have a look at a piece of legislation called The Communities Re-investment Act that Bill Clinton signed that forced banks to lend to poor people who didn't stand much of a chance of repaying the loans.....that's what "sub-prime" means.

That the American economy is collapsing right before our eyes is a result of government intervention, not the free-market. No banker would have made those loans without the government insisting they do......

That is all over-regulation.

Our banks were never forced to lend money to people who would be unlikely to repay.....what you called regulated.

The Free-Press doesn't seem to permit links.

Look up....

The Government-Created Subprime Mortgage Meltdown

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

...at the Lew Rockwell site.

"The thousands of mortgage defaults and foreclosures in the "subprime" housing market (i.e., mortgage holders with poor credit ratings) is the direct result of thirty years of government policy that has forced banks to make bad loans to un-creditworthy borrowers. The policy in question is the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which compels banks to make loans to low-income borrowers and in what the supporters of the Act call "communities of color" that they might not otherwise make based on purely economic criteria."

Chris,

A good example of the market being left alone and failing is the recent sub-prime mortgage blunder in the US, which ultimately lead the way to the current world-wide recession. The only reason Canada was saved this embarassment was because our banks were regulated.

I agree with you for the most part about letting the free market work, but there are definitely some things that can and must be regulated.

Andrew Bonner

Perhaps you can point to one instance of the free-market being left alone? The failure is always government interference....force instead of cooperation.

The whole purpose of the free-market is to deliver goods and services.

Poverty is the opposite of wealthy. Ergo, poverty will always exist as a measure of comparison. I know I'm poor because I know Bill Gates is rich.

The government can redistribute Bill Gates' wealth, but they can't redistribute his talent.

The market already provides all kinds of conciliation services like respected Arbitrators in business disputes that are cheaper than courts. So justice can be found in the free-market.

What is a resource? All the Oil on planet Earth sat here for billions of years and was of no practical use until the internal combustion motor came along. Nothing is a resource until man wants to make use of it.

Science has to be left up to the free-market too. Who knows how much money was and is wasted by government interference in science. Geeks like Henry Ford and Bill Gates would never get the time of day from the bureaucrats.

The Americans spent millions trying to learn the secrets of powered flight. The best and the brightest failed. The Wright brothers succeeded.

Real entrepreneurs operate best without any interference from the state. Those who relish government created opportunities are better at filling out the proper forms, but they never come up with original ideas.

What's with this silly free market superstition? Free markets - a human invention - lead to calamities when left to themselves. They have to be regulated. Furthermore they've consistently failed to provide answers to a lot of problems. They're fine when providing consumer products, but in everything else - attacking poverty, providing services, or providing law and order - they fail.

The head-in-the-sand climate luddites also need to look at themselves in the mirror. There's much more to the conversation than merely; is man responsible for climate change or not? The world has a growing population, and shrinking resources. These things are so obvious to be undeniable. These things need to be addressed, and our way of approaching this will bring opportunities in science, and business. Any real entrepreneur will be spitting in his hands at these opportunities. The fact most of our business elites don't indicates they're lazy and ready to be replaced.

Darsh

Who pays us back for the failure of a centrally planned economy is what I ought to have added to the question of what if the believers are wrong.

We already have enough of an Interventionist government that has done a lot of damage to the economy and moving left to centrally plan the use of energy won't make anything any better. There will be shortages of energy like there was in the command economy of the USSR. Central planners can never have the total of all the knowledge buyers use to make satisfy their wants on the free-market. Soon enough our betters will see to it that energy is used to make black boots size 9 (the most efficient use of energy), What if the pubic wants running shoes of all sizes?

General Motors volt says all you need to know. Soon enough the tarrifs on imported cars will give very little choice to the American consumer. All kinds of chicanery will go on to "encourage" energy efficientcy.

California has just legislated the "efficient" TV into existence. Three-quarters of the TVs in existence won't make the grade. I can cite all kinds of historic examples where science was ordered to do something and failed. The electric car California legislated into existence for the year 2000 makes the best example. Never happened because the battery to make it happen didn't exist. Even today the battery for the volt costs some 21,000 dollars. That car will not be cheap.

The free-market rules regardless of the damage done by good intentions.

The facts don't support the idea of man made climate change, but I'll sell you some carbon offsets if you would like Mr Hirst.
It's about time people started resisting this garbage, Harper is, but in the only politically surviveable manner possible.

Like most climate alarmists, Hirst employs all the standard scare tactics to convince people and governments to take strong measures against the alleged human influence on global warming. He makes two mistakes: (1) many of these doomsday predictions are either dead wrong or failed to materialize and (2) he's foolish enough to believe that computer projections of future weather-related scenarios are infallible. While he's at it, he slyly omits mentioning the fact that the planet has experienced all sorts of warming and cooling periods far into the past when human influence was non-existent. So it's time people like him adopted a new song&dance routine on climate change because everyone else stopped listening to the old one long ago.

All you climate change deniers are hilarious. This is not a matter of belief, it’s a matter of scientific evidence. There has already been a ton of peer-reviewed research performed by climate experts. The vast majority of scientists consider it to be true; there is no debate. Look up the research yourself - don't just spit out some anecdotal evidence to justify your lack of action.

It's not like you're being asked to re-fit your entire home or change your entire lifestyle overnight. All you're being asked to do is make some small changes, like driving more fuel-efficient vehicles and make efforts to use cleaner energies whenever you can. All these small things can add up and start to make a difference.

This is also not a burden on our economy. This presents new opportunities for us to develop new technologies and businesses. Stop thinking of this as a detriment to society – it’s not.

Finally, one commenter asked, "What if the 'deniers' are right and the ‘believers’ are wrong?” Well, ask yourself what side of the debate has the most to lose? If the believers are wrong, what are we left with? A society based on more efficient and cleaner energy use. What are we left with if the deniers are wrong? It's a pretty scary thought.

I applaud Mr. Hirst's editorial. He's right that the threat is too big too ignore. If we deny the possibility, and find out we are wrong, then we are in big and irreversible trouble. We don't have the luxury of avoiding the issue as we all know we don't have another planet to inhabit.

Because deep down the politicians know it is a scam. A scam that will wreck their own economies for real, in the pursuit of fighting against a threat based on fantasy.

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