The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen could be the defining failure of our generation’s leaders. It is certainly the defining failure of Canada in the eyes of the world. The Conference has been mired in pathetic finger-pointing, buck-passing, denial, and cynicism—“Nobody’s going to live up to these promises anyway, just like Kyoto.” Canada has been conspicuous in trying to appear to be doing something while doing nothing at all, save garnering more and more reasons for the rest of the world to find our climate control policies impotent and financially motivated.
I find it staggering that there are still people in this country who doubt climate change, who still question humanity’s contributions to global warming, who really will tell you that what David Suzuki and Al Gore and thousands of scientists and activists are telling us is a bunch of hooey. There are those who are willing to trump up their own scientists and activists who attempt to disprove climate change.
Do these people actually believe that limiting pollution is a bad idea?
Have they seen the smog in our skies, the filth in our rivers, the garbage in our ditches? Are they saying it’s not okay to do what we can to limit the putrefying of our world?
We Canadians are showing ourselves to be the most short-sighted of the pollutant nations because we’re too mired in our own partisanship and regional biases to look at the big picture. I get most of my news from the radio and the Internet, and I rely heavily on the CBC for that. Many people where I live see the CBC as a Liberal, Eastern machine. I don’t agree, but if nothing else it remains the best source of national news in this country. On CBC’s website, you can read a story, and then comment on it below. You can even choose to AGREE and DISAGREE with comments a la Facebook. Commentary turns nasty quickly, usually ending up in name-calling and petty region-bashing. The blogger is attacked rather than the idea. Oftentimes, intellectual disagreements turn into shouting matches over hockey teams.
Regarding the Copenhagen Conference, lines are being drawn in this country separating West from East, Conservative from Liberal, because people are so foolish they think “a vote for Blue is a vote for the West.” I swear, there are morons out here who would become Holocaust deniers if they were told the East said it happened. This country is full of dangerously, passionately uninformed voters.
People defend the tarsands in Alberta and Saskatchewan—while the rest of the world correctly condemns them—because of some spectre of the NEP looming again, of the East horning in on our cash bucks; other’s defend Canada’s right to do nothing in Copenhagen because up until today, nobody else has done anything either. It’s just been a lot of posturing and hot air.
“We’re waiting to see what the Americans do,” says Jim Prentice, “so we can harmonize with them.” Didn’t this country used to be one that showed a little initiative, hell, even a little spine?
I can’t believe the short-sightedness.
One comment made this week on CBC’s website by a user named Forwardpass brought me to a stop: “Just say no Canada! We can’t take anymore (sic) taxes. The world will not end.”
There it was, the financial angle. Worry about nothing but your own money. That’s the tarsands way, that’s the Canadian way. Do nothing, get paid. What if we are talking about the end of the world, at least as we have known it? To many, that’ll never matter more than revenue. How sad.
Many Canadians feel we shouldn’t have to change until the U.S. and China do. But, today when the U.S. and China were the first on a list of countries to actually try to draft a policy, Canada was out of the picture, sitting back, doing nothing, as we have been for the entire conference. The prime minister—in between tea with the queen of Denmark and going to see the Little Mermaid—claimed we’re doing nothing because we’ve done so much already. He failed to expand on that. When you’re in the back pocket of Big Oil, you’ve got to be careful about how much interest you show in limiting greenhouse gases.
Canada, a country of only 32 million, is one of the twelve worst world polluters, along with countries that have hundreds of millions of people, two with over a billion. Per capita, we are the worst nation on earth for usage/emissions.
Here in the West, the tarsands are vehemently defended. “Where else will we get our money?” “We need to support our growing energy needs.” Greed and gluttony. I’m no Christian, but when your two main worries are money and consumption, you need to go for a long walk and a think. If you can’t see that what we’re doing to our world is harmful, that something needs to be done, and that making money for money’s sake with no other concerns for the effect that has on the world is a pathetic form of life, well, you probably stopped reading when I didn’t write oilsands anyway. Next it’ll be cashsands or jobsands or bursarysands.
So, we have a policy in place, one that our country did nothing to help create. And it’s a pathetic policy that most countries will find it extremely easy to ignore—much to our government’s relief. Our prime minister and environment minister have both stated that they don’t see us going for any serious emissions caps, and that the tarsands would be given a break anyway. What’s the point if huge polluter’s like this go unchecked? It’s like banning firearms but letting people launch missiles.
The best the Canadian public could do was bicker, mock the protestors, refuse to challenge the polluters, and continue to consume, pollute and waste. Regional pettiness and greed have kept us from uniting and pressuring our incompetent leadership into actually leading.
You’d think with our army all over the world media for prisoner abuse, and with the Olympics coming to a transient-purged Vancouver, we’d be doing something to make ourselves look a little more appealing. I mean, damn, I see how China felt in the summer of ’08. “Why is everybody always picking on me? Oh, right, because of all that crap I’ve been doing lately.”
I am normally patriotic to a fault. I love this country as one loves a parent that has made mistakes, but in the end, has given you your life.
Today, I am ashamed to be a Canadian.
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