In an act of incredible chutzpah, a recent article by Conservative MP Colin Mayes misrepresents the Harper government’s blatant neglect of climate change as bold action.
The Harper government has been a major cheerleader for the oil and gas industry, spending millions of tax dollars in the U.S. and Europe to promote the oil sands. He has slashed environmental protection laws and environmental assessment regulations as requested by the oil and gas Industry.
Every year since Harper became prime minister in 2006, Canada has been awarded the Colossal Fossil award at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, as the country which has done the most to block international progress on climate change.
Harper repeatedly calls carbon pricing crazy and job-killing while economic studies indicate that more jobs are created per dollar invested in the renewable energy sector than in the oil and gas industry.
Many countries such as Norway, Germany, and China, are developing a strong renewable energy sector while Canada lags far behind.
A recent study in the scientific journal Nature confirmed that, “most of the Earth’s remaining fossil fuels will have to be left in the ground if the world is to avoid catastrophic global warming.”
Harper’s plan for regulating greenhouse gases (GHGs) is a sector by sector approach first announced in 2007.
But eight years later, there are still no regulations for the oil and gas sector, which is the fastest growing source of GHGs in Canada.
This is akin to creating salmon fishing regulations which only apply to the Prairie provinces.
Harper attempts to minimize Canada’s GHG emissions by saying that they represent only two per cent of global emissions; yet we produce four times the global average per person.
That two per cent alone is now responsible for 8,800 lives and $15.4 billion annually in costs of climate change according to an international humanitarian organization funded by UNICEF.
That would make the Conservative government and its stubborn refusal to deal with our new energy reality to be the real terrorist threat in Canada.
Eli Pivnick
Vernon
