Harper, Obama and Climate Change: A Tale of Two Elections

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States last Tuesday was a historical event, and has in many ways ushered in a new era in American politics. Tuesday also marked the beginning of a new political relationship between Canada and our neighbour south of the border – one that will most likely take on a significantly different shape than our relationship with the previous U.S. administration.

This was evident only the day after the election, when Ottawa announced its intention to seek a climate-change pact with the United States that would potentially establish “common standards and mechanisms such as a market-based emission trading system” (“Ottawa swoops in with climate-change offer”, The Globe and Mail).

While this would appear to be a positive and progressive development, Canada is also seeking to use this pact to protect Alberta’s oil sands from potential U.S. climate change legislation. This is seen as a political move to counter campaign promises by Obama that the U.S. would reduce its dependency on “dirty” oil, or energy extracted using environmentally unsustainable methods such as the Alberta oil sands (for more information of Alberta’s tar sands, see John Hiemstra’s work on Excavating the Alberta Oil Sands with Public Justice).

To date, Canada has had a dismal record when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases and addressing the issue of climate change. The shelving of the Kyoto Protocol and the reluctance of Canadian officials to cooperate during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in 2007 are two significant examples of this. While the Canadian Arctic is experiencing some of the worse effects of climate change in the world, the Canadian governments have still not been motivated to create real change.

I find the lack of political willpower to address crucial environmental issues such as climate change to be very disheartening, and representative of a persistent value of short-term gain over the long-term health of both our country’s environment and our economy.

We saw some positive change during the recent election, where for the first time, the environment was presented as a central issue in a political campaign. The Liberal’s “Green Shift” plan, the heightened profile of the Green Party, and the presence of environmental policies in the platforms of the other political parties reflected the growing public concern over the environment in Canada.

However, the latter half of the election saw the environment pushed to the side for a number of reasons – a primary one being the framing of environmental protection as being at odds with economic growth. The financial crisis which erupted in the middle of the campaign exacerbated fears over the impact that environmental policies could have on economic growth and competitiveness in Canada. As a result, the possibility of a new climate change initiative was largely been pushed aside, until now.

However, what hasn’t been promoted widely in the media – particularly during the campaign – is the understanding that our environment and our economy are inextricably linked, and the health of one is dependent upon the other. Our economy is derived from our natural world – we use natural resources to manufacture products, fuel our vehicles and machinery and grow the food we eat – and the health of our environment is dependent upon us using these resources wisely.

It would be a positive (if not ironic) change if the United States – one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters and a country that has long snubbed initiatives to limit their emissions – would be the one to lead Canada in addressing climate change. While the possibility of a climate change pact with the United States is positive news, it remains to be seen what shape it would take and the actual impact it would have.

In the meantime, we must continue to pressure our governments to enact positive change. I see hope in the progress that some European countries have made in adopting carbon taxes and carbon cap-and-trade systems to reduce emissions. The presence of strong emission-reduction policies in the platforms of all four opposition parties – which would have been unheard of a decade ago – is also a positive shift.

However, change at a deeper level – a level that is not only economic, but cultural as well – must occur if we are to balance our consumption with environmental protection. Canada must own up to the environmental damage it is currently causing, and take responsibility for the future of our country. To truly foster a healthy economy, politicians must actively reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and find viable alternative sources of energy.