It is not often that an emperor’s clothes are torn from him in full public view, but that is precisely what happened to Stephen Harper at the Commonwealth summit in Kampala.
On the crucial issue of climate change, Harper had one ally when he arrived in Uganda, the right-wing government of Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Alone among the fifty-three countries at the conclave, Canada and Australia opposed the inclusion of binding greenhouse gas reduction targets in a Commonwealth statement.
The problem for Harper is that midway through the meeting, the Australian people threw John Howard’s government out of office and resoundingly chose the Labour Party, which plans to sign on to the Kyoto Accord, to govern the country.
That left Harper all by himself in Kampala. After long negotiations between the Harper contingent and the rest of the Commonwealth, a “compromise” statement on climate change was agreed to, a statement which drops mandatory targets in favour of “aspirational” goals.
Aspirational targets are the Alberta’s oil patch’s synonym for hot air. Having had his robes stripped off in Kampala, Harper still is outfitted with his fig leaf. We can expect that leaf to be front and centre on his persona when he returns to parliament. Harper will insist that while the Commonwealth’s eventual statement dispensed with hard emission targets for developed countries, it declared that developing as well as developed nations should “aspire” to greenhouse gas emission reductions. Or, as a Calgary oilman might say, hot air for everyone, hard targets for no one.
Last week, Environment Minister John Baird claimed on CBC television that Canada was on the same page as Europe on climate change, but that Canada has set out to construct a bridge to nations such as the U.S. on the issue at the global climate change conference in Indonesia next month. He insisted that Canada has a special talent for bringing people together.
His bridge building metaphor implies an effort to find common ground on which two groups of countries with different approaches can stand. But at Kampala, it was all the other countries that had to build a bridge to Canada. The result was a statement on climate change that had been modified due to Canada’s efforts from serious to frivolous.
The Harperites will no doubt point to the Commonwealth statement as evidence of Canada’s growing influence in the world. But now that Australia has gone over to the European side on climate change, to whose shores can Harper and Baird construct their bridge.
The obvious answer is the United States. The trouble, though, is that even the Americans are not standing still on the issue of climate change. Most Americans now revile George W. Bush who is Harper’s only remaining foreign ally on the issue. Next fall the United States will elect a new president who will be almost certain to take a tougher line on global warming than the Harper Conservatives.
The Harper Bridge is a bridge to nowhere. The sad fact is that as long as Canadians have this government at the helm, we will be bringing up the rear on the greatest global question of our time. Or to keep up the metaphor, we will be sitting on a shoal, connected to the rest of the world by the Harper government’s pontoon.
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2 comments:
Not only are we bringing up the rear, Harper insists on kissing US ass.
If we wait until everyone gets on board before we set hard targets then there will be nothing but more hot air causing even greater global warming.
http://kencan7.blogspot.com
Commonwealth was a prominent opponent of the apartheid regime in South Africa. In the 1960s, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru led a joint effort that read South Africa out of the Commonwealth. In the 1980s, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney rebuffed efforts by UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan to dilute sanctions until South Africa really began to reform and democratize in a genuine and determined way. Commonwealth suspended Nigeria for 3 years after the 1995 hanging of the activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. Zimbabwe was suspended from Commonwealth in 2002.
The Commonwealth allows for member countries to be suspended for Human Rights abuses, but ignores the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on some of the poorest countries in the world. The definition of serious violations should embrace much more than it does now.
But present Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's foreign and domestic policy has fulfilled the hopes of US conservatives. In 2007 Canadin Prime Minister Stephen Harper along with Australian Prime Minister John Howard has successfully blocked more than 50 Commonwealth countries that were seeking a climate change resolution that would force industrialized countries to adopt a binding commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Canada’s lack of action on climate change is contributing to droughts, floods and sea level rises in small island states and vulnerable commonwealth countries such as Maldives, Bangladesh, and Mozambique. Canada’s emissions have risen by more than 25% between 1990 and 2007. Canada is at the bottom of the G8 league table for action to tackle climate change. Canadians consumes far more than their fair share of petroleum and owe a debt to developing countries of the Commonwealth for the impact of their emissions on the climate. Canada is getting away with climate crimes that are destroying homes and livelihoods of the people live in developing countries of the Commonwealth. Present Canadian government continues to support for the extraction of oil from Alberts tar sands, a process which is 3 times as damaging to the climate than extracting conventional oil. Extracting millions of barrels of dirty oil from Alberta tar sands and abandoning the Kyoto treaty is not the behaviour of a responsible commonwealth country and Canada should be suspended from Commonwealth immediately. Canada’s complete failure to cut its emissions is making the global situation worse. If the Commonwealth countries are serious about holding their members to account, then they should suspend Canada immediately since it is threatening the lives of millions of people in developing Commonwealth countries. Unless Canada is willing to stop blocking international climate negotiations through its continued support for the Alberta tar sands, Canada should withdraw its membership with Commonwealth. The Commonwealth should hold Canadian government to a higher standard.
- Nalliah Thayabharan
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