“O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” Robbie Burns composed those immortal lines before the advent of today’s powerful international media. These global village chroniclers are certainly giving Canadians the gift of seeing ourselves—and the picture’s not pretty. Apparently we’re seen as corrupt villains bent on derailing efforts to head off the looming climate change disasters that threaten flood and fire. Take British journalist George Monbiot, for example. His columns for The Guardian are deadly heat-seeking missives syndicated all over the world.
“So, here I am,” Monbiot wrote recently from Toronto, “watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petrostate.” He went on to describe how Canada abandoned its commitment under the Kyoto Accord to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, increasing them instead by at least 26 percent over 1990 levels. “Until now I believed that the nation which has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States,” Monbiot continued. “I was wrong. The real villain is Canada.”
Monbiot then chronicled Canada’s efforts to prevent fellow members of the Commonwealth from adopting a resolution calling for binding greenhouse gas emissions targets. He reported that environmental groups presented Canada with a Fossil of the Year Award in recognition of our efforts to disrupt the December 2008 climate talks in Poland. That same month Germanwatch, a non-profit organization based in Bonn, rated Canada’s record on its climate change performance index the second-worst among the world’s 60 richest countries. Yes, we ranked 59th—just ahead of Saudi Arabia. Finally, Monbiot predicted Canada would do everything in its power to wreck the current climate talks in Copenhagen.
But why would such a peaceable, decent bunch like us try to do a shitty thing like that? Monbiot gives two reasons. The Canadian government, he writes, “is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee’s tea party.” He’s referring to the antics of our Pinocchio prime minister and the ultra right-wingers around him. As the leader of CRAP, the Canadian Alliance Reform Party, Stephen Harper signed a 2002 fundraising letter pleading for money to block the Kyoto Accord. He called it “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.” Nowadays, he pretends he cares about climate change, but our emissions are predicted to rise to 44 percent above 1990 levels in 2010 and the chimpanzee tea party in Ottawa has done nothing to curb them.
Monbiot’s second reason tells us why. The Harperites have their heads buried deeply in Alberta’s tar sands. Current plans call for levelling 3,000 square kilometres of boreal forest, strip-mining the land to recover the tar-like bitumen and shipping it off unrefined to the fading American empire. It’s a key part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the corporate-driven plan for a fully integrated North American economy. Thanks to the tar sands, Canada is already the single largest oil exporter to the US and if things go as planned, we’ll contribute more than a third of Uncle Sam’s oil.
Alberta journalist Andrew Nikiforuk points out that Canada is now one of the highest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases in the world. “The tar sands industry burns enough natural gas every day to heat four million homes,” Nikiforuk reports in his 2008 book Tar Sands. More recently, he completed a report for Greenpeace Canada which points out that by 2020, “emissions from the tar sands will rival those of many large European nations.” No wonder then, that as the Canadian government tries to block climate change agreements to protect tar sands development, we’re seen as villains—or as Monbiot writes, an “immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world.”
We would do well to heed our foreign critics. As Robbie Burns wrote, seeing ourselves as others see us, “wad frae monie a blunder free us.”
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This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2009.
If Canada really are the villains of the (environ)Mentalists then many other countries are flying under the radar.
No mention of Australia, whose Senate became extremely hostile to any changes and voted down Carbon Laws, whilst rising emissions the same degree as us.
No mention of Portugal or Spain or Greece whose emissions have risen at a higher rate than ours. Or Ireland or New Zealand whose emissions rise is only slightly less.
And obviously, no mention of the real villains, India – 100%, and China 150%.
No no no, it’s all Canada’s fault.
And…we contribute only 2% of world GHG emissions.
It’s easy to point the finger at China, but we (North Americans) are the ones buying all the products they are producing which is leading to the increasing emissions. Think about the number of products we buy that are “Made in China”, and think about the greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants that are produced by China in order to make those products. I say this not to pull all blame off of China, but to point out that in this global economy, we are all responsible, so pointing fingers at particular countries is not going to get us anywhere.
Frankly, I could give a rat’s ass what the Eurotrash think. Do you think for one nano second if they were luckly enough to have our vast energy supplies that they wouldn’t be using them? Burning fossil fuels only seemed to become a sin when The North Sea deposits were pretty much played out. It’s the hight of hypocracy this insane campaign against “evil Canada” and ignore the mess China is spewing out. Not to mention the 500 additional coal fired generating plants they have plans for. They make vague noises about carbon intensity(the same thing Harper was pillored about years ago), and they are now the darling of Copenfraud. I also see Obama has quietly approved more imports of tarsands crude to be refined stateside. Hypocracy abouds.
Not saying this guy is 100% right… but we could do better. The oil sands are good for our economy right now, but think about the remediation costs 50 years down the road. A good example is close to home with the Tar Ponds in Sydney, they have been there for decades and we are still spending money trying to fix that disaster.
We need to shift our money into new renewable energy projects now so that we don’t have to take money in the future to fix the problems the fossil fools in parlement are creating today.
This current Canadian government is a disgrace that we all should be ashamed of! We’re proving that humans aren’t that sophisticated by choosing greed over the health of our planet. We could be creating green jobs and ensuring a future for all children. Instead Mr. Harper is destroying all the lands, creating toxic environments all in the name of the mighty dollar. When are people going to realize the madness of our actions?
I pray we all wake up.
A lot of people in China and India starve on a daily basis since Canada kept on accepting their produce , only to dump them- look at all the excess foods that go into the dumpster of the grocery stores/ supermarkets .
Bruce why are you just blaming Steven Harper and the conservatives? I hope you do know that the federal Liberals might have signed climate change action or Kyoto but it was under liberal governments when carbon emissions went up not the Conservatives PLEASE DO YOUR HOMEWORK before you start blaming the Conservatives again.
More left-wing trash from Wark. Canada is a large country in a northern climate — of course we are going to use more energy. But somehow that finger-pointers fail to note the vast expanse of forest across this country that eats all that CO2. There are many villains in this piece. Canada is not one of them.
How can they compare emissions on a per capita basis when comparing Canada to the rest of the world? We are the second largest country but we only have approximately 39 million people so if you base our emissions on a per capita and compare it to China with their approximately one billion people or the US with their approximately 350 million people, it will probably look like we are using more per person. How do we compare with China and the US when you view the emissions by the square kilometer? I would bet that we don’t look so bad then, do we? As another poster already mentioned, we have a vast forested wilderness that can absorb a lot of CO2 much better than the over populated countrys can.
While I do agree that more needs to be done and that Harper is not the person to do it, I still think we are being made out to be villians quite unfairly because of the per capita comparison and not a per square kilometer comparison.
All country’s need to clean up their emissions, if not for climate change then just to keep the pollution from becoming much worse.
Um, we have 33.3 million and China have 1.325 billion.
Your numbers are pretty off, but point holds.
Please don’t get too hung up on ways of measuring greenhouse gas emissions. Any way you slice it, Canada does not compare well with other countries. Here is a quote from the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy: “Although Canadians make up fewer than 1% of the world population, Canada contributes about 2% of global GHG emissions.” The Roundtable’s Fact Sheet goes on to point out that when you measure “total emissions” (not per capita), Canada ranks around 7th place among the top 10 polluters. You can view the chart for yourself at: http://www.nrtee-trnee.com/eng/publication…
It’s worth remembering that under the Kyoto Accord, Canada agreed to reduce its GHG emissions 6% below 1990 levels between 2008-2012, but instead so far, has increased those levels by at least 26%. http://www.davis.ca/en/blog/Climate-Change…
The Conference Board of Canada reports that based on 2005 figures:
*Canada ranks second-to-last out of 17 countries for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per capita and earns a “D” grade.
*Canada’s GHG emissions have increased by 32 per cent in 15 years.
*The largest contributor to Canada’s GHG emissions is the energy sector, which includes combustion, transportation, and fugitive sources. http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/…
Yes, it’s possible to quibble about ways of measuring things and to point out Canada is a big country with a relatively small population, but overall our climate change record is dismal.
FIrst of all…our “Vast Forests” do not discriminate between CO2 from Canada, the US, or and other country…so saying that we have those to eat out emissions is crazy!
Second, why do some people think it makes more sense to base things on our lad size and not per-capita? Land size has nothing to do with it, but population uses the energy…so logically it makes sense to me.
We may not be doing the best we can to reduce our GHG emissions, but it’s not fair to say we are villains. The real tragedy here is that Canada has the potential to innovate and lead the world in reducing GHG emissions but we are choosing to take the cheap and easy (oil and coal) way out. Our contribution to the global warming problem is minimal..it’s just our political attitude needs to change. The general population of Canada would, I believe, support more ‘green’ initiatives and they don’t have to run counter to our obvious economic interests in the Alberta oil sands. Harper won’t be in office forever, so hopefully our next Prime Minister will have more environmentally friendly priorities.
In Montreal: Those per capita numbers are not good indicators either. They typically don’t take into account import/export of GHG either. For example, how much of the world uses the products produced in China? We blame them for producing to much GHG, but we are the ones who are consuming it. Similarly, Canada sells its oil…so who should be responsible for the subsequent GHG from burning it, us or the consumer? This is a GLOBAL problem. It’s useless to try and place blame on one country or another. We should be focusing our attention on collectively developing new technologies that will reduce GHG emissions. If the developed countries (like Canada) can develop and implement new technology then we can help to make it cheaper for developing nations to acquire so they can get off the oil we are selling them.
Yorkke with chinese numbers like that… they probably fart more pollution than all of Canada produces…& then on top of that that have all the coal fired plants & other destructive things they’re doing in their country !Last time I read about them in National Geographic they were putting a new coal fired power plant online every 7 to 10 days in 2006. Their increase in global warming gas from coal use will probably exceed that of all other Industrial Nations combined by 25% ! ! !
So Canadians go burn some tires, burn every plastic piece of garbage you can to keep it out of the landfills ! And we’ll still be so far behind China, in polluting, we won’t even be visible in their rear view mirror !
Maybe Canada is giving Copenhagen the stiff shoulder because some of our leaders are actually smart enough to know that Climate Change is the biggest fraud in the 21st century!
We have only been documenting our climate for the past ~200 years. Earth has been around for 4.5 Billion years! Lets say of that 4.5 Billion that life has only been hospitable for 1 billion. Take a look at how many zero’s are in a billion. 1,000,000,000 = 1 billion. 200/1,000,000,000 is not valid science. It’s guesswork. In the 1970’s climatologists said the planet was cooling. They called it Snowball Earth. Then somewhere in the 90’s they said, hmm, bugger, that doesn’t work. Then it turned to Global Warming…. then upon further inspection…yup, that’s stupid too. So now we slap a label of “Climate Change” on everything and force every country in the world to adhere to a set of standards that are costing billions of dollars.
This is 100% retarded. I’m all for recycling and what not, but common. Relax a bit. Once the average citizen is smart enough to realize that nuclear fusion isn’t dangerous we’ll all jump on that band wagon next. Anyone who believes in this garbage is being brainwashed by the masses to live in a state of fear. Every generation has it’s apocalypse criers….we’re still here. effin lemmings.
Whether you believe in climate change or not, the fact remains, governments do not really exist, people exist. It is people who have carbon footprints – not governments. . Don’t look at China, or the US, or the Alberta Tar sands – look in your driveway, at your chimney, your transit to work, your food buying habits. We cannot hide our head in the (tar)sands and wait for government to fix a problem created by the people. If poeple really cared… but we don’t, not really – it’s easier to blame things on our governments than to actually do something ourselves. And it makes better press and phot-ops too.
Whether you believe in climate change or not, the fact remains, governments do not really exist, people exist. It is people who have carbon footprints – not governments. . Don’t look at China, or the US, or the Alberta Tar sands – look in your driveway, at your chimney, your transit to work, your food buying habits. We cannot hide our head in the (tar)sands and wait for government to fix a problem created by the people. If poeple really cared… but we don’t, not really – it’s easier to blame things on our governments than to actually do something ourselves. And it makes better press and phot-ops too.
Governments want to tax you so they back the Global Warming Theory. 1200 limos were used to ferry money bags in Copenhagen. 140 private jets flew in for the meeting. Denmark ran out of Limos, so more had to be driven in from Germany and other parts of Europe. The private luxury jets clogged Copenhagen’s airport, so the private jets were sent to Norway to park.
The British Prime Minister chartered a 120+ passenger jet to take him and 20 assistants to his Photo Op in Copenhagen. The very same day, Prince Charles took a private Luxury jet to Copenhagen. THe very same day there were at least a dozen commercial flights from London to Copenhagen. One would think that the British PM could have shared his plane with Prince Charles as there were over 100 “EMPTY” extra seats available. One would also think that they could have flown on a regularly scheduled commercial flight to Copenhagen and saved British Tax Payers a huge sum of money and not emitted tons and tons of extra CO2.
They don’t worry about the massive amount of extra CO2 that their actions caused. Why then should Canadians?
Anyhow, good news on the Global Warming front. Check the Carbon Trading Exchange.
http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/market/data…
A ton of CO2 offsets is now down to 10 cents a ton. At that price banks and other promoters of carbon trading can’t make huge profits. Remember they want $10 – $20 or more per ton. If the 10 cent rate does not rise for say 6 months, you won’t be hearing much more about Global Warming caused by CO2. They will close shop and probably get a government bailout to cover their losses as happened last year with the losses from trading credit default swaps. Credit Default swaps are no longer in the news, and Global Warming news will go the same route.
You see the Global Warming Theory is VERY PROFITABLE, but only for some. You think money bags spent so much money on 140 private jets, 1200 limos, filled luuxury suites for nothing? It must have been very profitable to spend that kind of money. Just think what their profit potential must be like.
In the meantime they send out an army of fear mongers to scare the little tax payer, whose pockets are about to get picked again. Why fear mongering? Ever hear about the human “flight or fight” response. When we have that response, humans shut down the critical thinking part of their brain – you don’t need to ask a bunch a questions when a tiger or lion is stalking you. They don’t want tax payers to ask inconvenient questions.
If reducing CO2 emissions was so critical why did an army of between 20,000 to 34,000 people travel to Copenhagen in Dec 2009 to the IPCC conference? They could have setup video conferences and probably accomplished more and saved hundred of thousands of tons of CO2 emissions. BTW, the UN is supported by the Tax Payers of it’s member states. So Copenhagen was a HUGE tax payer funded junket and photo-op. No one seriouslyasks why and for what? No one ever asked how can people afford to go to Copenhagen via private Luxury jets. No one ever asked why the Limo riders could not have taken public transit and shared taxis. It was cold in Copenhagen. 1200 Limos sitting around running their engines to ensure money bags enters a “warm” car.
No one cared how Global Warming might be affected from the CO2 emissions given off by 1200 idling Limos, or the emissions from Limos having to be driven into Copenhagen from Germeny, because Climate Change Conference attendees would not take public transit of share taxis – or God forbid even walk (Copanhagen is compact. not dispersed like LA in California or Toronto in Ontario). Why should Canadians care about CO2 and the Global Warming Theory? The politicians who went to get their photo-op did not care about the affect of CO2 emissions on Global Warming. Why should you care? I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Lets just hope that the price of a ton of CO2 offsets does not rise above 10 cents per ton in Chicago.
I have lived in Montreal most of my life and I don’t need a scientist to tell me that the weather is getting warmer all the time.Winters here are nothing compared to what they used to be. Scientists tell us the arctic is melting faster than ever, and people still deny climate change because they are too used to a cushy, car-based lifestyle. It’s obvious we have made a mess of this planet, and still there is so little action taken. No wonder I’ve heard this referred to as the Age of Stupid.
Tariq Mehdi
St. Lambert
Quebec