An Inconvenient Movie
So last night I finally sat down to watch An Inconvenient Truth. I’d been putting it off for years because every time I go to watch it I know it will be depressing and it just seemed a little masochistic somehow. So why now? Well for one thing I didn’t have anything pressing in the queue to watch (sorry Jon, Heroes can wait) but I think also because for the first time in, oh, a little over 7 years I feel a sense of greater hope regarding our chances.
Sure fixing the ozone was big, felt a weight off my shoulders when I heard that but more so my new hope comes from the Obama campaign as well as the renewed focus on the environment in mainstream politics and beyond. PC World magazine rates power consumption on desktops now. In a recent by-election the Green Party trailed the NDP by about 1%. Now the NDP’s no slouch on the environment either.
If the Greens and NDP combined they’d have been a stone’s throw from winning that seat. Just drop the anti-Afghanistan thing and strengthen their environmental policy and they’d be on their way.
It started a couple years ago, I remember watching the first Conservative cabinet shuffle on Newsworld or CPAC and they kept talking about who the new Minister of the Environment would be. That’s kind of like speculating over the head of the navy of a land-locked country. A Conservative environment minister who doesn’t just deregulate (read: hasten our destruction), that’ll be the day.
The newscast kept citing polls that the environment was the number one issue among Canadians. I was shocked, albeit pleasantly. Wasn’t the country trying to separate or the economy in the tank or some scandal afoot? I can’t say exactly what did it, it was awhile since An Inconvenient Truth came out, Katrina before that…did David Suzuki set himself on fire or something?
Well whatever the cause, a Conservative federal government was putting the environment at the top of their agenda. Was this a sign of the apocalypse or it’s prevention? I had no illusions the Conservatives would actually do anything about it but the fact that they were even talking about it seriously, much less putting it at the top of their agenda, was a huge step forward in terms of political consciousness and years if not decades before I predicted.
So what did the Conservatives do? Well they blew off Kyoto and flipped the international environmental community the bird. They became more obnoxious than Bush at international summits; lecturing others but refusing to do anything themselves, including meeting prior commitments.
You know what the only substantive things did they did?
1) Set a timetable for phasing out incandescent light bulbs so some future administration will have to find a way to implement it. I’m not even convinced that this is a net gain for the environment when you factor in the harmful chemicals contained in the alternatives.
2) Tax Cuts! You guessed it, they proved they were true small-c conservatives by solving every problem with a tax cut. In this case a deduction for buying a hybrid, but only certain hybrids and only a small tax break. Given the cost of hybrids it wasn’t enough to make even these specially ordained hybrids competitively priced versus traditional cars. It didn’t so much provide an incentive as marginally reduce one disincentive.
3) Okay I have to give the Conservatives props for this one, they made bus passes tax deductible. That helps the environment, the working poor, students, as well as municipal and provincial transit programs. Not to mention me.
So where does that leave us? With a motivated and concerned electorate and a government that is either incompetent on this issue or uncaring, perhaps both. So, and it’s not easy to say this, we need to look to our neighbours to the south for leadership. I believe Barack Obama has the environment in the appropriate high priority and has the intelligence, principals, philosophy, and ability to turn this thing around.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve been watching the primaries so closely; our long term survival may depend on their outcome.
