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Posted on 04/28/2007 5:28:22 AM PDT by knighthawk
The Conservative government's green plan, released with much fanfare on Thursday, is a mixed bag and so deserves a mixed response. Much of the substance is praiseworthy (and some is not), but the spin has been atrocious. John Baird, the Environment Minister, has been so keen to win praise from environmentalists and green voters that he has adopted the scare-mongering rhetoric of the Liberals and other eco-crusaders. In announcing a plethora of emission caps, carbon-trading schemes, pollution controls, taxes, regulations, penalties and light bulb bans, Mr. Baird couldn't resist predicting that winter as we know it will disappear if action is not taken urgently. He also repeated green myths that our air quality is deteriorating and that human emissions are responsible for thousands of premature deaths each year.
Rather than engaging Canadians in a rational debate over the extent of our greenhouse gas problem and explaining how his government's practical emissions plan -- which is backed up by real penalties and phased in over a short, but achievable timeframe -- is preferable to the controls demanded by environmentalists, Mr. Baird chose to taunt the other parties into a game of political one-upmanship. Rather than toning down the emotion surrounding the climate file, the Minister ramped up the hype and entered the Conservatives into a bidding war with the opposition over who cares more, who is prepared to spend the most, who offers the toughest standards.
On the positive side, far fewer billions will be spent overseas buying foreign carbon credits to cover off Canada's greenhouse emissions, and there will be no carbon tax.
On the negative side, however, there will be heavy new taxes on vehicles and appliances, and a ridiculously authoritarian ban on incandescent light bulbs. (At least the Conservatives managed to resist the temptation to make Canadians replace all their commodes with low-flush models.)
The Conservatives deserve praise, though, for treating smog and greenhouse gas emissions as two separate issues, which they are, and for reserving their harshest new regulations for air pollution. Foul air is what truly concerns most Canadians. But the Kyoto accord and the previous Liberal green plan did not address brown, hazy summer days; only the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other socalled greenhouse gases released by the consumption of carbon fuels. Ever since, the Liberals and their green allies have been playing off confusion between the two to let voters think that stopping global warming meant cleaning up pollution. It doesn't.
Rather than perpetuate this duplicity, the Conservatives are calling for absolute reductions in smog of 50% by just 2015. And they are backing up this call with real sticks. In what they have labelled a "polluter pay" system, industries must dramatically reduce the toxins coming from their smokestacks or pay hefty fines.
On carbon emissions, which are less damaging to personal health but also harder to control, the Conservatives have a more moderate approach. Industry will be permitted to reduce their emissions in proportion to their growth. For each unit they produce, they will have to lower their CO2 output. Still, if their business grows, their emissions may grow, too, just not as rapidly. This "intensity" approach means the country's overall emissions will continue to grow for the next three to five years. After that, however, total emissions should begin to decline without the wrenching economic dislocations that so-called "hard caps" would produce.
What irritates the opposition and environmentalists about this is that it de facto ends Canada's commitment to reach its Kyoto targets by 2012. Even the Liberals have known for years that cutting our emissions to 6% below their 1990 levels (about 35% below where they currently are), as Kyoto mandates, could not be achieved in so short a time without unbearable economic pain. That is why they themselves, when in power, never did a thing to force Canadians to comply.
But the Liberals always kept rhetorical faith with the myth of Kyoto compliance, and the greens loved them for it. Mr. Baird's plan will almost certainly do more to reduce both pollution and greenhouse emissions than anything tried by the previous government. But because it refuses to bow down before the Kyoto altar, the opposition and the environmentalists are up in arms.
That said, though, Mr. Baird paid rhetorical fealty to plenty of eco-myths in his selling of his plan. He repeated dubious claims made in a highly politicized report to the Ontario Medical Association that smog causes thousands of early deaths each year. And he maintained our air is "dirtier than ever before," when even the ecofriendly officials in his own department have said there are far fewer truly harmful substances in the air Canadians breath than 20 or 30 years ago.
Such over-the-top language only plays into public fears that we are nearing an environmental catastrophe. And that in turn plays into the hands of the parties and organizations who are seen as more green than the Tories.
If Mr. Baird wants Canadians to accept that his party is doing enough to preserve the environment, he should be trying to counter dire eco-warnings. Instead, he is buying into the hysteria and making it even more difficult for his practical, made-in-Canada solutions to find a constituency.
The Conservatives' green plan might be sound enough, but their sales effort is self-defeating.
Ping
Yeah, they did that here. Hard to believe there's a "black market" for toilets in the US. Sheesh.
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
New!!: Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
The conservatives have made a tragic mistake, they are attacked by both sides on this issue, they should have done nothing and they would have “won” now I think they will never win a majority.
Use and enjoy our Worldlyy gifts
For Earth’s final fate,
Is to be mere cinder bits
Drifting about in frozen space.
kyoto means worse pollution. Once clean fuel (that only puts out H2O and CO2) is taxed out of existence, people will have to burn tires, plastic and whatever else they can to stay warm in the winter.
This is the truth that the left doesn't want people to know. A carbon tax will have to be an oppressive tax to have the effect they want.
People will be forced to a lower social status.
People will have to make ends meet in their own way and pollution will be much worse.
Thanks for the ping.
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