Premier's green plan takes province nowhere

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 2/11/2017 (322 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Under the guise of its "made-in-Manitoba" climate plan, the provincial government has referred our future to committee. All of the things we could, should and must do are now open for conversation and discussion by the whole province which, of course, will lead nowhere by the next election.

Committees are structures designed and intended for the dissipation of energy. No new idea, however good, will keep its momentum for change very long once a committee goes to work on it.

Any consensus on action regarding greenhouse gases or climate change that results from this "plan" will, therefore, have to be engineered, perhaps (once more) through those outrageously bad government feedback surveys that are conducted online.

Premier Brian Pallister has become the Leader Who Wouldn’t Lead. By the end of his term in office, much of the remaining global window to effect change to help steer the planet away from otherwise inevitable catastrophe will be gone.

It is an astonishing dereliction of duty, not merely some clever political ploy to play competing groups against each other. Governments of whatever ideological stripe have a responsibility to all the citizens, not just to all the partisans.

(To be clear, I am not trying to make a political statement here. The only party to which I have ever belonged — 40 years ago — was the Progressive Conservative Party.)

Pretending to have a perspective that considers the effects of its decisions out to the seventh generation, and then offering a document like A Made-in-Manitoba Climate and Green Plan, is simply offensive.

Launching it from the wonderful wild bird sanctuary at Oak Hammock Marsh either demonstrates the provincial government has a twisted sense of humour, or none at all. With this as our climate plan to combat global warming, take your pick of conclusions: either our goose is cooked or we are all dead ducks.

The provincial government does not need our ideas. It has been inundated with good ideas since the Tories came to office. They merely want to avoid decisions that might have a political cost, at least as far as that is calculated in the back rooms of the PC party’s headquarters at 23 Kennedy St.

For example, they chose to give the agricultural sector a free pass on greenhouse gas mitigation — as though farmers don’t live on the same planet as the rest of us or are somehow clueless about the effects of climate change and global warming.

"Can we afford to do it?" is the wrong question. "Can we afford not to do it?" is closer to an inconvenient truth.

To be clear, again, I am offering a personal perspective here, not one necessarily associated with any of the groups to which I belong.

After all, the air I breathe, the water I drink, the food I eat — they are all personal. It is the same for you, for our children and grandchildren, and for all the children of Earth, present and future, who are the silent victims in this conversation.

Since Premier Pallister doesn’t like email, send him a letter, or a postcard, that identifies what is important to you:

I want to breathe clean air. Or, I want to eat healthy food. Or, I want to drink clean water.

Or, I don’t want my children or grandchildren to die because you have done nothing to change the future that is almost here.

Single stamps cost one dollar — perhaps the most important loonie you will ever spend.

The address is:

Premier Brian Pallister

204 Legislative Building

450 Broadway

Winnipeg, MB R3C 0V8

Mobilize your church, temple, synagogue or mosque to do the same. Your community club, agricultural association, curling rink, hockey team, book club, office or organization. Put a pile of blank cards out for customers, next to the till.

It’s about good business as well as wise choices. There is no profit in a healthy future that will not exist. Science and common sense must replace partisan politics and denial.

Premier Pallister, if you and your government are not just dodging your ecological responsibilities (as you have dodged them for the past 15 months), take a month to "listen" and then step up to do what you should have done from the start.

Make Manitoba the carbon-negative province it could be. Make us world leaders instead of laughingstock at home and abroad. Invest in a future the rest of us believe could be there if we work at it, even if you have lost hope and don’t believe it is possible.

Or resign, right now, all of you, and let someone else try before it is too late.

Peter Denton is a local sustainability consultant, writer, speaker and activist based in Manitoba.