Kyoto Accord

June 28, 2008

Dalton McGuinty gave is full backing to Stephane Dion’s Green Shift policy the other day as he embarked on the summer recess from the Ontario legislature. McGuinty expressed his support despite the fact that he leads a province heavily reliant on manufacturing to drive the economy and provide jobs which will be subjected to a shift of billions in taxes on the carbon dioxide producing industries should Dion form the next federal government. Dion’s risk to himself and his party means McGuinty can endorse it and not do anything (as per usual as is the case with McGuinty’s dismal environmental record) until Dion surprises everyone and gets elected.

Of course McGuinty isn’t the first guy in charge of a government to be all talk and no action, and Dion isn’t the first guy wanting to lead a government with a lot of talk and the promise of action. Al Gore as we all know has been a tireless advocate of doing something about Climate Change, despite not doing much about it while in office or campaigning for President. Onetime environmental laggard Jean Chretien has always boasted about signing on to the Kyoto Accord despite conveniently ignoring the obligations. And Just recently the former British PM was pleading leaders of the G8 to bridge the chasm on climate change. So easy it is to talk the talk when out of office. But even while he was PM, Tony Blair spouted similar pleas promising to lower carbon dioxide emissions to 20% when in fact witnessing increases during his time in office.

So as Stephane Dion begins his gruelling coast to coast sale of the Liberal Party’s Green Shift carbon tax plan, Dalton McGuinty can relax and enjoy the summer months to come complaining about how the Harper government isn’t doing enough to stop climate change while feigning belief that Dion’s plan will be warmly endorsed by the Canadian public.

December 12, 2007

Look who’s strutting around and putting down successors and criticizing governments now debating and putting together new agreements on Climate Change and Global Warming… Jean Chretien. The former Prime Minister conveys how proud he is to call his signing on to the Kyoto Protocol as a defining chapter of his Legacy despite the lack of action which followed. It’s all in this article:

TORONTO – What was intended as a feel-good gathering of prominent Liberals celebrating the legacy of one of their most illustrious leaders took a divisive turn Tuesday as Jean Chretien again took aim at his successor Paul Martin’s track record as prime minister, this time for failing to meet Canada’s obligations to stop climate change. The duelling former prime ministers, whose bitter leadership rift seems to have spilled over into their retirement years, were among the Liberal heavyweights headlining the conference lauding Lester B. Pearson’s contributions to global peace, which earned him a Nobel Peace Prize 50 years ago. Chretien’s speech to the conference, hosted by Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae, included harsh words for the Conservatives’ stance on the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions. “I am not very pleased today to read what people are saying about Canada in Bali at this moment about the environment,” he told the conference. “I think it is an urgent problem and we should have been at the forefront. When we signed Kyoto, we knew very well when I was there what we were doing, and it should have been implemented. But now we will not meet the target because we lost four years.” But outside the hall, Chretien was quick to point the finger at Martin’s government for dropping the ball on Kyoto after he left office. “I don’t know what happened, I was not there,” he said. “I know that I was negotiating with the oil industry, and the oil industry pulled back from the table.” When asked why it took so long for Canada to get somewhere on Kyoto, Chretien replied, “Sometimes, when you lose four years, you lose four years. There’s nothing I can do about it.” But Chretien said he doesn’t blame current Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, who was environment minister under Martin, for the failure to meet Canada’s obligations under Kyoto, an international treaty that Chretien’s government signed 10 years ago. Dion had to cancel his scheduled appearance at the conference to attend an international climate change summit in Bali, Indonesia. Martin, who delivered his speech two hours after Chretien left the building, defended his record on climate change, saying his government’s policy was regarded as “the most comprehensive attack on climate change that we’ve ever seen in Canada.”

Ten years ago papers were hammering Jean Chretien for having contributed nothing to help solve environmental issues. Here’s an example:

Global warming: action or inertia?
Hamilton Spectator Editorial
October, 02 1997
 

Bill Clinton is demonstrating environmental leadership as he tries to rally American public opinion behind a global treaty cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The American president’s willingness to put his prestige on the line stands in contrast to the political inertia shown by the Chretien government on the problem so far. If the Liberals are to achieve their stated goals in reducing the pollutants that are believed to produce artificial global warming, they must give the problem a much higher profile. Clinton can’t be accused of sleepwalking on the difficult, but urgent, greenhouse gas issue. He raised the stakes yesterday by gathering 100 weather forecasters on the White House lawn in support of stronger action to reduce the buildup of fumes and smoke in the Earth’s fragile natural environment. Cynics dismissed the event as a public relations gimmick. But Clinton deserves marks for taking a stand that will almost certainly involve some lifestyle changes for American consumers and economic adjustment. The president faces stiff opposition from powerful politicians, industrialists and union leaders, who are reluctant to act even though the U.S. is a major polluter. America lags behind other countries in pledging itself to targets for carbon dioxide and other pollutants. The U.S. Senate has said it will reject specific greenhouse gas cuts unless they’re matched by targets for developing countries. The U.S. can do much better than that. So can Canada, which has the second-highest per capita greenhouse emission rate among industrialized countries. The Chretien government should be front and centre with a strategy in advance of international negotiations on a treaty in Japan in December. Instead, it’s making no visible attempt to focus attention on the problem, and how to implement realistic, achievable and cost-effective solutions. The government has relied on a voluntary emissions reduction program that hasn’t done the job. The outlook isn’t likely to improve if the debate, such as it is, is dominated by the likes of Alberta Premier Ralph Klein. He maintains that binding emission reduction targets will penalize his province unfairly. Klein appears to oppose even modest reductions. He should be more open to compromise. A failure by all industrial nations to take effective action now runs the major risk of precipitating an future environmental crisis that would require drastic economic and lifestyle changes. Critics of controls cite potential job losses in moving to a more sustainable economy, but they often overlook the potential employment from improving energy efficiency in offices and homes; developing super-efficient, environmentally-friendly cars and trucks; and investing in renewable energy projects. It’s time for the Chretien government to follow Clinton’s lead and come out of the closet with a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Few problems are as pressing as the need to better protect the planet from choking in man-made gases.

Chretien was in his fifth year of office as Prime Minister by time the above editorial was written. It was my first year as a cartoonist when I drew the (rather crude)cartoon below for the October 2, 1997 edition of the paper, for which I chose to draw on the environment, an issue that Chretien was completely unconcerned with at the time:

April 26, 2007

Since October I’ve drawn at least 20 editorial cartoons on the environment. I doubt I matched that number in the 9 years previous to October of 2006. Greenhouse warming, global warming, climate change – these are some of the buzz words of the green revolution that have become a part of our daily lives for the last 6 months. How does last year’s #1 priority issue of health care drop completely drop out of the collective mindset this year? The war on terrorism is so last year, and now we’re planted somewhere within an undefined space of time in which we so resolutely battle whatever is meant by the buzz words I mentioned above. “Go green now, or die”, seems to be the mantra accepted by many as this revolution sweeps the – well, modern industrialized world, I guess. Who knows what they’re thinking in certain third and second world nations where rainforests continue to be clearcut at an alarming rate and toxic waste is being spewed into the air and into the water without any thought of regulation. Really, do people here think that by signing onto the Kyoto Accord, China, India, and a number of environmentally comatose regimes in Africa, Asia, and South America, are going to be shamed into signing on for the good of the planet?

An interesting government report was leaked to the Toronto Star which identified three groups of Canadians said to be susceptible to changing their actions to improve the environment:

  • The “Suzuki Nation,” making up one-fifth of the population, finds the negative state of the environment in conflict with their values, expresses high environmental concern and is motivated to take action. These are people who would be compelled to act even without offers of tax cuts and other economic incentives designed to change individual behaviour.
  • “Invested Materialists” are the 28 per cent of people who do not find the current environmental state in conflict with their values and have low levels of concern. But these people will “act if given the right reason” such as an economic incentive or enhanced social prestige.
  • The last category is “Ambivalent Materialists” the 15 per cent of Canadians who feel that a polluted environment is in conflict with their values, but are not concerned about current pollution levels.

Do you know which group you belong to? I think you could add a group above the Suzuki Nation who’ll never be satisfied with any government green plan unless a total ban is imposed on all fossil fuels. In fact, I think some people will never be happy until everyone, including John Baird and Stephen Harper, are forced to go back to nature wearing fig leaves on their naughty bits.

I’d like to suggest another group might be added to the ones above. One representing people who feel the current environmental state is in conflict with their values but understand that the economic sacrifices necessary to meet the Kyoto targets are too great considering barely a dent will be made in reducing global greenhouse gases.

I’d put myself in this last group and to paraphrase a well meaning slogan “think globally, and act locally”, I’d like to see ‘locally’ replaced with ‘continentally’. I think many more strides can be made if Canada, the U.S., and Mexico worked together to cap carbon and sulphur dioxide emissions and effectively monitor what’s being sent into our shared atmosphere. It would probably mean a new administration in the White House, but I think there could be real results other than the all-talk-no-action fantasy that is the Kyoto Accord.

February 2, 2007

Yesterday morning as my 5 year old daughter and I were getting ready for our walk to her junior kindergarden she asked me whether or not the groundhog had seen its shadow. Groundhog Day? Is it that time of the year already? How did my 5 year old learn about Groundhog Day? Didn’t matter, she reminded me that it was that time of the year to draw a cartoon on the issue. It’s a day that comes and goes and is easy to miss for cartoonists. The day combined with famous rodents lends itself well to politics and politicians in general. So, I quickly drew up this cartoon to celebrate the occasion. It doesn’t appear in the Spec, but it was available to newspapers through my syndicate at 9:30 am the day before.

October 12, 2006

The stereotype of an environmental activist is the vegetarian, sandal wearing, multiple pierced liberal with no tolerance for a conservative government, and especially any type of environmental policy formulated by a conservative. It doesn’t matter how environmental a right leaning government could possibly be, it’s assumed by environmental groups that conservatives are more interested in the green of money than the green of nature. This, despite the fact that leading environmentalists crowned Brian Mulroney, a (Progressive) conservative, the greenest Prime Minister in Canadian history for his efforts to reduce acid rain, and his establishment of the South Moresby national park. Here is a case where the results of environmental plans are graded for their effectiveness. So while many would conclude Jean Chretien and Paul Martin as green Prime Ministers for advancing Canada’s willingnesss to embrace the Kyoto protocol, they fail the grade for a hollow promise whereby meeting targets to reduce greenhouse gases became quite clearly, an impossible undertaking.

Then, on the eve after drawing this cartoon I watched a great program on PBS hosted by Bill Moyers which investigated conservative attitudes towards the environment through evangelical Christians. It challenged the old notions that to be environmental, you have to be liberal. Here’s how the program is described:

A new holy war is growing within the conservative evangelical community, with implications for both the global environment and American politics. For years liberal Christians and others have made protection of the environment a moral commitment. Now a number of conservative evangelicals are joining the fight, arguing that man’s stewardship of the planet is a biblical imperative and calling for action to stop global warming.

But they are being met head-on by opposition from their traditional evangelical brethren who adamantly support the Bush administration in downplaying the threat of global warming and other environmental perils. The political stakes are high: Three out of every four white evangelical voters chose George W. Bush in 2004. “Is God Green?” explores how a serious split among conservative evangelicals over the environment and global warming could reshape American politics. For more on this documentary…