Sunday, January 07, 2007

Don’t blame Rona Ambrose, blame El Nino!

Earlier this week Prime Minister Harper shuffled his cabinet and assigned embattled environment minister Rona Ambrose to a new portfolio. I will always remember Ambrose for her laughably poor defense of the Conservative’s “Clean Air Act,” a watered down, non-Kyoto-compliant plan to sort of reduce emissions. It was yet another instance of our national leader looking south and drawing on the sage-like wisdom of George W. Bush to determine the policy direction for our formerly independent country. Ambrose, of course, was just trying to do her job, and really, I don’t think I would have had much more intelligent to say about such an awful plan.

At any rate, it turns out we have nothing to worry about anyway. With 2007 slated to be the warmest year ever (well, I expect it was a little warmer just after the big bang, but nobody was really measuring the temperature at the time), it has been revealed that greenhouse gasses are not the real problem, it’s that pesky El Nino again.

But wait, like most Canadians, I enjoyed a green Christmas this year. White Christmases are in the minority here on the west coast anyway, but a white Christmas in Winnipeg is something to talk about. A few days later I was surprised to read of a massive chunk of ice breaking free from Ellsmere Island in the Canadian North. I thought at first, “no problem, it’s El Nino.” Then I read further in the article and discovered that the ice actually broke off a year and a half ago, long before this round of El Nino was even on the radar.

So it would seem that maybe we cannot conveniently blame El Nino for everything that is going wrong with our climate. Maybe it was a smart move to get rid of Ambrose and hopefully get someone in who actually has a clue about environmental issues. But maybe we have not gone far enough. I think if we want real change, we have to stop shooting the messenger and go right to the source. I think it is time to topple our half-baked, watered-down, Bush-worshipping Conservative government and vote in leadership that has the strength and vision to come up with truly innovative solutions to the problems this country is facing.

In the meantime, I will be writing to Steven Harper to suggest he hold his next caucus meeting on the freely-floating Ayles shelf sometime round about July (if he’s still the PM by then).

4 Comments:

Joan said...

And who do you propose should displace the Conservative government Andrew? I agree they need to go, but I am curious to hear who you have thrown your support behind...

8:42 PM, January 07, 2007  
Michelle said...

Joan, The Answer to Your Question in HIS Mind Might Just Be "Andrew Baxter - PM".

I too am Curious to Hear MORE thoughts on this subject Andrew.

If You Were to Go After the PM spot Imagine the Blogs about you THEN, I am thinking your Google Searchability factor would Shoot Right Through the Roof!

5:28 AM, January 08, 2007  
Sharon B said...

Andrew, check out Elizabeth May - the leader of the Green Party in Canada. She would love to have you on her team! She is quite a force to be reckoned with, and intelligent and articlulate to boot - look at her blog, especially for October 2006 where she reacts to the so-called "Clean Air Act".
http://www.greenparty.ca/page269.html
I think we are going to hear a LOT more from her - and I think that's a GOOD thing :)

5:19 PM, January 10, 2007  
Susan Gibson said...

I second the motion about the Green Party. Check them out - seriously.
There is an interesting excerpt from a book by Merrit Gibson (no relation) which tells about a time when mature forests around the Minas Basin were under water. He then writes "Two hundred and fifty years later, with the climate warming, the waters of the Basin would rise again". It seems that greenhouse gas emmissions or not, Kyoto or not, climate change is inevitable, and goes in cycles, no matter what P.M. Harper, Rona Ambrose, George Bush or even the Kyoto accord declare!

9:59 PM, January 10, 2007  

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