Prime Minister Harper and other members of his government — and even the PM’s wife, Laureen — are doing a fair bit of grandstanding against the backdrop of the cruel and devastating typhoon that struck the Philippines.
Almost daily, they are announcing various forms of Canadian aid: from cash to airplanes to teams of disaster relief specialists.
Anything Canada can do is desperately needed, of course. The people of the Philippines will welcome whatever assistance actually gets to those in need.
We must remember, though, that the officials and others making these announcements are not heroes. They are simply doing their jobs.
The money Harper’s Ministers are very publicly pledging is not their own; it is all Canadians’ money.
It’s climate change, stupid
More important, there is another kind of relief the people of the Philippines would very much welcome: long-term relief from the devastation wrought by global warming.
As the scene of death and devastation unfolds in the Pacific, there is a United Nations Conference on Climate Change taking place in Warsaw, Poland.
The Philippines’ chief delegate to that conference, Naderev Sano, has pledged to fast for the duration of the Warsaw meeting, in solidarity with his suffering country folk.
Earlier this week, Sano spoke passionately about the connection between global warming and the violently unstable weather that has stricken his country:
To anyone who continues to deny the reality that is climate change, I dare you to get off your ivory tower and away from the comfort of your armchair.
I dare you to go to the islands of the Pacific, the islands of the Caribbean and the islands of the Indian ocean and see the impacts of rising sea levels; to the mountainous regions of the Himalayas and the Andes to see communities confronting glacial floods; to the Arctic where communities grapple with the fast dwindling polar ice caps; to the large deltas of the Mekong, the Ganges, the Amazon and the Nile where lives and livelihoods are drowned; to the hills of Central America that confront similar monstrous hurricanes; to the vast savannas of Africa where climate change has likewise become a matter of life and death as food and water become scarce. Not to forget the massive hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern seaboard of North America.
And if that is not enough, you may want to pay a visit to the Philippines right now.
To the climate change deniers and those who seek to downplay the devastating impacts of global warming in favour of an approach that “balances” the economy with the environment, Sano had these words:
Science tells us that, simply, climate change will mean more intense tropical storms. As the Earth warms up, that would include the oceans. The energy that is stored in the waters off the Philippines will increase the intensity of typhoons and the trend we now see is that more destructive storms will be the new norm.
The Philippines’ delegate then addressed the current calamity in his country directly, using the Philippine name for Typhoon Haiyan, Yolanda:
Typhoons such as Yolanda and its impacts represent a sobering reminder to the international community that we cannot afford to procrastinate on climate action. Warsaw must deliver on enhancing ambition and should muster the political will to address climate change.
Conservatives cheer Australia as it moves backward on greenhouse gases
The current Canadian Conservative government has plenty of political will. Unfortunately, none of it is focused on ending global warming.
Canada is way behind its own weak 2020 targets for greenhouse gas reductions, and the little that has been achieved, to date, cannot be attributed to federal government action. The provinces and municipalities are doing all the heavy lifting on climate change.
Indeed, two of the Harper government’s truculent, anti-environmental announcements during Typhoon Haiyan week demonstrate its true “compassion” for the millions of current and future victims of global warming.
Harper’s Parliamentary Secretary, the ineffably supercilious Paul Calandra, issued a press release on Tuesday to heap praise on Australia’s new conservative Prime Minister for repealing his country’s carbon tax.
The release claims the Australian move will be “noticed around the world.” Australia’s short-sighted and greedy decision confirms the Canadian Conservative government’s “approach” to climate change, Calandra says.
Oddly, Calandra does not say what the Harper government approach is.
At other times, the Conservatives have claimed they are taking a “regulatory approach” to greenhouse gas reduction. Mostly, that seems to consist of adopting American rules, after the Americans promulgate them — on automobile emissions, for instance.
So far, the Harper government has not gotten around to setting out regulations for the oil and gas industry, including the tar sands.
But Canada is vigorously defending the right of those who exploit the tar sands to continue to pollute, and not be penalized for it.
We’re not so bad because others are not as good as we thought
On Wednesday, in its second give-the-finger-to-the-environment announcement of the week, the Harper government released a study that purports to show that tar sands bitumen is not really all that dirty — comparatively speaking, that is.
The Canadian government is vigorously lobbying the European Union to change its Fuel Quality Directive so that the directive does not penalize Alberta bitumen.
In aid of that effort, Harper’s Natural Resources Minister, Joe Oliver, commissioned the United States-based mega consultancy, ICF International, to do a study comparing total Alberta tar sands greenhouse gases to those produced by conventional oil production in places such as Nigeria and Russia.
The results of the study are highly technical, and, ICF admits, somewhat speculative and inconclusive.
The consulting company explains that accurate information on emissions is hard to get from many countries because multi-national oil companies are not forthcoming, and because many countries do not carefully and accurately monitor greenhouse gases.
ICF does say, however, that the total greenhouse gas emissions from such countries as Nigeria are likely much higher than the Europeans believe them to be. The Canadian government thus believes it has the right to argue that, compared to other types of oil on the market, tar sands emissions are not so bad.
That is what passes for good news on the environment from the Harper government.
Yes, Canada is seeking to export a product which, in its extraction, despoils vast areas of water and soil, and the production of which requires huge expenditures of greenhouse gas producing energy.
Sure that may be bad for the environment of the Athabaska region and bad for the climate of the globe.
But here’s the good news! Competing fossil fuel sources may not be as clean as the Europeans think they are — so please do not penalize Alberta’s tar sands product.
The people of the Philippines can definitely take great comfort from that.
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