Memo to PM: Catch up with voters on climate

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Consultants, CEOs and, yes, Conservatives insist that you can't manage what you don't measure.

But when it comes to climate change, Stephen Harper doesn't want to measure what he doesn't want to manage.

At the United Nations yesterday, as in Australia two weeks ago, the prime minister skirted hard facts in repositioning Canada from near bottom of the polluter pack to top of the heap of energy giants whose love of green extends beyond the Yankee dollar.

That complements his Canada Day claim that, in every way that matters, Conservatives are putting this country back on the world stage.

Heck, it might even be tolerated as harmless hyperbole if so many scary measurements weren't being reported even as Harper promotes the hee-haw notion of managing climate change with aspirational targets.

For starters, it's pretty darned certain that Arctic sea ice is going the way of cubes in a cocktail glass.

And because the ecumenical National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy says so, it's known that the Harper government is systematically exaggerating expectations for its latest, grudging, green plan.

If candour were to slow spin, the prime minister would admit that Canada is backsliding in the international theatre where the climate drama is playing. Almost as disturbing, this country is keeping bad company.

With notable variation but shared purpose, Canada is advancing with the U.S. and Australia a post-Kyoto Protocol that will be more inclusive and accommodating by being less demanding. That relaxed approach to safeguarding humanity's nest contrasts with the iron fist these countries are shaking at the far less existential danger of global terrorism.

Pity the former prime minister who has to autobiographically explain why compelling evidence of an environmental death spiral was ignored while the government was otherwise engaged in a war on a tactic that, no matter how vile, has no lasting power to knock confident democracies off course.

It will be even harder still to persuade grandchildren that their health and well-being weren't worthy of economic sacrifice or as important as protecting the ruling party's resource-rich base.

Just catching up with consensus would make those apologies unnecessary.

A poll published hours before Harper's New York speech again demonstrates that government lags far behind voters on climate change. Unlike Liberals who mostly limited their effort to signing Kyoto and Conservatives who hope new rhetoric will erase old memories of climate change skepticism, Canadians are serious about protecting the planet.

Climate change now looms larger than health care or Afghanistan. More disquieting still for politicians juggling competing interests and prospects, the issue is no longer abstract, it's personal. Among the interesting findings of the Harris/Decima polls is that an overwhelming majority, 68 per cent, report experiencing the effects of climate change.

Politicians put themselves at risk by shirking responsibility when public concerns become personal worries. Harper took that chance in New York by casting his government in a supporting role, leaving the lead to technological advances and market forces.

No doubt both are essential.

But this prime minister, burdened as he is with a spotty record and inclined toward the easy way forward, needs to prove before the next election that he's willing to measure and to manage what Canadians agree is most important.

James Travers' national affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. [email protected]

PUBLICATION: The Hamilton Spectator
DATE: 2007.09.25