Over a period of the last million years, CO2 never exceeded 280 ppm (based on actual readings of atmospheric chemistry from Antarctic ice-core data.) The last time greenhouse gases reached 400 ppm was three million years ago. Put simply, humanity has now changed the chemistry of our atmosphere to replicate pre-historic levels—a time when no humans existed.

Related: Sign a petition for a National Cimate Strategy

Concentrations of GHG are a very different measurement than emission rates. Concentrations have a very long lag-time and will not be able to be decreased except over centuries, while emission rates can go down overnight. It is critical to start reducing emissions, because existing concentrations mean that we will see warming over the next 100 years from today’s emissions.

CO2 levels are monitored daily at Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii. When the monitoring station was set up in 1958, CO2 levels were at 317ppm. The rise to 400ppm was not expected so soon. Meanwhile, the Canadian government has joined in a global commitment to hold concentrations of greenhouse gases to levels that would avoid allowing global average temperatures to rise by 2ºC. Scientists have marked that wide red hazard line in a band between 425-450 ppm.

Avoiding 2ºC is critical because it represents a danger zone. Some refer to it as a point of no return—or a ‘tipping point to self-accelerating global warming, the so-called ‘runaway greenhouse effect.’ The actual tipping point might be 2.5º, or it could be 1.5º. Two degrees represents a consensus of scientists, but no scientist I know is sanguine about 2 degrees. It is certainly not a safe zone.

The most recent International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook includes some number crunching. If all the world’s known reserves of fossil fuels were to be used, the climate would move the world to a non-habitable state.

In fact, the IEA has said that to avoid an increase of 2ºC, at least two-thirds of known fossil-fuel reserves must stay in the ground until at least 2050.

The Over-rated Fossil Fuel Economy

This finding has led to a new and potentially powerful financial calculation. A major new report from the UK, Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted Capital And Stranded Assets, engaged the talents and expertise of Sir Nicholas Stern through a collaborative research project involving Carbon Tracker and the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and Environment.

The result is a new concept—the ‘carbon bubble.’ The essence of their work is this: a great deal of the stated value of stock exchanges around the world is in unburnable fossil fuels. The level of capital expenditure in developing those reserves over the next decade would amount to $6.74 trillion in wasted capital—developing reserves that simply cannot be burned.

The report calls for ratings agencies to update their approach to verifying the financial health of stock markets and individual companies. If assets being used to offset liabilities are assets that can never be used, then large parts of the economy—now seen as credit-worthy—are over-valued.

The consequence for financial markets is obvious. Meanwhile, the report notes that the carbon intensity of the New York and London stock markets is actually increasing; New York by 37% over 2 years and London by 7% over 2 years.

The creative notion that Moody’s and other credit raters might be able to do through financial valuations what governments have so far failed to do–bring Big Oil to its senses–is certainly tantalizing. What is encouraging is the extent to which the notion of a ‘carbon bubble’ as financial risk is catching on.

Perhaps that’s what we need—a clear financial consequence our brains can comprehend. Maybe we should keep the focus on the financial threat, while acknowleding the irony that it may be easier to provoke change through large multinationals and stock exchanges than through thoughts of our children’s dismal future.

The problem with most of the questions is that they start a bit later in the scenario than they should.

First up, was Mike Duffy promised a Senate seat if he worked really hard to sabotage the Liberals in the 2008 election?

I had been interviewed by Mike Duffy and known him for years.  I was fond of him.  I never thought he was biased one way or the other – until his coverage of the 2008 campaign.  Some may recall me taking him on in a live interview when his introductory set up for Peter MacKay (interviewed just ahead of me) was so outrageous that I accused him of a lapse in journalistic ethics.  When the interview was over, I remember thinking, “Well, I will never be on Mike Duffy Live ever again.”  And when he was appointed to the Senate right after the election, I knew I was right as the show ceased to exist.  His lapse of ethics was more spectacularly evident in broadcasting out-takes from the Atlantic bureau’s interview with Stéphane Dion.  Opportunities to do “re-asks” are not uncommon and they are never broadcast.  Doing so, when Dion’s team had been told they could ask the questions over again, was outrageous.  It clearly impacted the election results.

The other questions also matter.  Did the Prime Minister promise Duffy he would fix the financial and legal mess created by false claims for a housing allowance?  Why would the Prime Minister do such a thing?  Does Duffy have anything he can hold over the PM, such as proof of the Senate seat for journalistic shilling in an election campaign?  Did the Prime Minister ask his Chief of Staff to write the cheque?  Frankly, I can see no other reason why a smart person like Nigel Wright would do something so obviously wrong, unless he was directed to do so by the Prime Minister.

Normal people are asking questions like “who has $90,000 in their chequing accounts?  Who has $90,000 in their chequing account and they have it to spare in case someone needs it?”

None of these questions matter as much as why is it that no reporter has been able to get a response from anyone in Harper’s administration about the chemistry of the atmosphere now being dangerously altered.  The news that we have hit 400 ppm of carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere makes Mike Duffy’s expense account scandal look like the petty criminality it likely is.  And, of course, there are approximately 1% as many words in our press about the 400 ppm news as there is about the Mike Duffy scandal.

The big crime continues to hide in plain sight while Stephen Harper continues his looting of our children’s future.

UPDATE: Just received news that Nigel Wright has fallen on his sword for the PM and become the literal fall guy. All questions still stand.

“Old age is not for sissies,” said Bette Davis. Indeed, it is not, but the images from our childhood of what it meant to be “old” have changed dramatically. Of course, as I enter my 60th year, my perspective on what it means to be “old,” of necessity, shifts. As another popular aphorism, puts it “the hardest thing to decide is when middle age begins.” Thanks to advances in health care and a focus on healthy living, Canadians are living longer. And today’s senior has different issues and challenges than in our grandparents’ day. I see it every day, as my riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands is one of those with the highest proportion of older citizens. While so much in the mass media sees only the negatives of this aging demographic, there is much to celebrate.

The group Moses Znaimer calls “zoomers” are not abandoning their love of tennis or skiing. The aging population is increasingly embracing the benefits of staying involved, especially as they give back to community through the donations of thousands of hours of volunteer work.

That is, of course, not to deny the challenges. Today’s seniors want to know that pension and retirement savings are adequate to maintain an active lifestyle. The Green Party supports expansion of the Canada Pension Plan. CPP is sustainable and reliable. It is time to review whether RRSP is working as a vehicle. Evidence suggests its uptake is very limited, it has a large impact on government revenues and yet it seems to benefit primarily those Canadians who least need it.

Staying active is challenging in a car dominated culture. An aging population increases the need for convenient, accessible, mass transit. As it becomes less safe to drive at night, seniors want access to public transit.

The most extreme challenges of aging are experienced by seniors living in poverty, a disproportionate proportion of whom are women. While the percentage of seniors living in poverty dropped dramatically from a high of approximately 30 per cent in 1976, to a low of 4.7 per cent in 2007, the poverty rates for seniors have begun to move up once again5.8 per cent in 2008. We cannot be complacent about the economic struggles of our seniors.

Meanwhile, the widely-repeated claim that the growth in aging Canadians as a proportion of our population will drive up health-care costs is not supported by the evidence. Empirical evidence suggests that the aging population is not a major cause of increased costs. According to the Canadian Institute of Health Information: “Analyses of the drivers of increases in public sector health expenditures over the last decade showed that the contribution of aging has been relatively modest. To date, system-level cost drivers such as inflation and increased utilization have played bigger roles in health spending increases,” according to Health Care Cost Drivers: the facts, CIHI, November 2011.

The largest single driver for increased health-care costs is the rising cost of pharmaceutical drugs. We are all too often seeing evidence of over-prescription of drugs, and registration of drugs that actually will harm more people than they help. While seniors are wrongly seen as the reason for increasing health-care costs, the reality is that seniors are particularly vulnerable to the excess use of prescription drugs.

That is not to say that our health-care system is ready for an increase in the diseases of aging, particularly dementia and Alzheimer’s. We need to significantly improve supports for family members. So often a senior becomes the full-time caregiver for their spouse. Particularly, seniors of limited means lose any potential for enjoying life as they sacrifice for their partner. Better respite programs, better supports for home care, as well as more beds in long-term senior care facilities are needed, with supports from both federal and provincial governments.

We also need to have a conversation about the loss of basic rights experienced by seniors in care. One of the most shocking trends that I have uncovered since becoming an MP is the loss of basic human rights for seniors in residential care. Shockingly, I have heard dozens of stories of seniors being denied access to family members, being placed on drugs they do not want, and even being denied the right to go home to family members who would welcome them.

And lastly, we need to grasp the nettle of the thorny ethical problem of assisted suicide and the right to die with dignity. The solutions will not be simple because the problems are complex. Nevertheless, Canadians are demanding better answers. We need to engage in a respectful, informed discussion starting with a review of the various legal regimes in use around the world. We need to ensure that discussion is grounded in bioethics and premised on an acute awareness of the slippery slope of creating the impression that some human lives are worth more than others. What we must not do is to continue to ignore the suffering of well-informed, adult Canadians who wish to make a choice to die with dignity in their own country.

Originally printed in the Hill Times.

Parliamentary democracy in Canada has been on the ropes for awhile. The Prime Minister does not act as ‘first among equals’, but increasingly like a Roman Emperor. The Prime Minister and his cabinet do not respect principles of the supremacy of Parliament, but act in arrogant and unaccountable ways—denying Parliament key information, even information as essential to good government as basic background to fiscal decisions.

RELATED: Elizabeth May Tables Bill Targeting Excessive Party Discipline

Fundamental to these dangerous trends is the rise in control of MPs by political parties. The political party overlay on Westminster parliamentary democracy is a relatively new and growing phenomenon. Not until the late 1960s did the name of the candidates’ political party appear on the ballot. Simultaneous with that development, the Elections Act was amended to require the leader’s signature to verify that a candidate was properly from the party claimed. A seemingly innocuous change has led to the ability of leaders of political parties to use the threat, that nomination papers will not be signed, to keep their MPs in line.

And the role of leaders of parties has started to ape the US system to such an extent that federal (and provincial) election campaigns are run as though the ballot choice was the election of a Prime Minister (or Premier). We do not elect Prime Ministers in Canada, but this confusion is undermining the essence of representative democracy.

Compounding these trends, which to greater or lesser degree pre-date Stephen Harper’s administration, we now have the political arm of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) reaching into previously off-limit areas. The PMO operatives are bullying the civil service into corrupting the policy making process with blatant spin and doctoring of evidence.

When Kevin Page, Canada’s first Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), spoke on April 4 at a Green Party sponsored lecture at UVic (well worth watching in its entirety on Youtube: http://www.andrewjweaver.ca/video_an_evening_with_kevin_page), he noted that ‘every Parliamentary institution is under assault.’ His two take-away messages: that the control of the public purse must return to the House, and that decisions must be based on evidence.

The Court Ruling

For a while, knowledgeable commentators have taken to pondering if Canadian democracy has a pulse. Then on April 22 and 23, two unrelated events took place, quickening the pulse of Canadian democracy.

The first was the ruling of the Federal Court of Canada on the lawsuit launched by the PBO. Kevin Page refused to accept the refusal of the Clerk of Privy Council, shamefully telling the PBO that none of what he wanted was available; accepting commands from the PMO and denying that the impacts of the falling of the axe must be transparent to MPs and to Canadians.

And so Kevin Page went to court. The court ruled that the PBO was within its mandate to request information about the impact of the cuts in the 2012 budget. The Federal Court confirmed the supremacy of Parliament, the right of each MP to have access to information: about where the budget cuts landed and what effect they have on government programmes. In fact, the court ruled this information should be available to any back-bencher.

Thanks to Kevin Page, the right of any MP, and the PBO itself, to access documentation about government finances has been confirmed. The court went on to find that Page had not fully demanded the information after the clerk said he couldn’t have the information. So, on that technicality, it might appear Page lost. But the right to access that information has led the acting PBO to demand the information.

The SO31 ‘Game’ – Not

The very next day, the Speaker ruled on a recent complaint by Mark Warawa, Conservative MP from Langley, BC. To understand his complaint, you need to know that for 15 minutes every day in the House of Commons, there is something called Members statements (under Standing Order 31, so sometimes called “SO31s”). An SO31 allows a member 60 seconds to make an uninterrupted statement. They are usually about events in the riding, or eulogies for recently departed local heroes. Lately, the Conservatives have mis-used the opportunity for prepared attacks on the NDP claiming they want a $21 billion carbon tax.

Each party whip coordinates which MPs are going to make their SO31s. Apparently, the Conservative whip also vets (and censors) the statements. One day, Mark Warawa was told his statement was unacceptable and his chance to speak was withdrawn. He did something unprecedented in the life of Mr. Harper’s reign. He complained to the Speaker.

Over a few weeks, many MPs supported the complaint, making the case that MPs have the right of free speech. Of course, I spoke in support of Warawa’s complaint, but so did about 7 other Conservative MPs.

The Chief Government Whip argued that the Speaker was a mere ‘referee’ and that the party leader and his operatives were like the coach with the right to decide which players to play.

On April 23, Speaker Scheer’s ruling supported the right of free speech. He completely rejected the sports metaphor and confirmed that only the Speaker has the right to recognize MPs. The convention of the party whips in giving the Speaker a list of MPs to call on was only adopted to assist a previous speaker who had difficulty remembering names (or so goes the story).

The Speaker’s ruling confirmed the absolute right of Members of Parliament to free speech. And it is the duty of the Speaker to maximize that right of free speech. The Speaker, similar to the PBO court ruling, went on to find that Mark Warawa had not tried to speak, by catching the speaker’s eye and trying to get the floor. As such, the Speaker found his rights had not been infringed.

Nevertheless, two rulings, back to back have confirmed the absolute right of free speech and of the right of all MPs to have fiscal information essential to the role of the Parliament as a whole to govern.

We have a pulse!

Here’s the text of the motion:

That this House:

1. agree with many Canadians and the International Energy Agency that there is grave concern with the impacts of a 2 degree rise in global average temperatures;
2. condemn the lack of effective action by successive federal governments since 1998 to address emissions and meet our Kyoto commitments; and
3. call on the government to immediately table its federal climate change adaptation plan.

There are three clauses and I have trouble with each one of them. Before parsing the motion to explain the difficulties with all three clauses, let me point out the overwhelming problem: the motion does not call on Stephen Harper’s administration to do anything about the threat of rising greenhouse gases.

The action part of the motion calls for the government to “immediately” (that sounds good!) “table its federal climate change adaptation plan.”  (whoops, where did the action go?)

An “adaptation plan” is all about how to adapt to climate change.  I have long called, as has the Green Party, for a climate adaptation plan.  But I would never call for an adaptation plan with no parallel effort to reduce the climate change impacts to which we will have to adapt.  To do so is to announce we are throwing in the towel. We are abandoning efforts to reduce carbon pollution and will only do what we can to hold back rising seas, adjust to dropping water levels in the Great Lakes and Georgian Bay, plant drought resistant crops, brace ourselves for increased forest fires, loss of Arctic ice, permafrost melt, etc.

It is mind-boggling that the NDP motion failed to call for action.  Did they forget that part?  Were they worried a call for real action to fight global warming would create space for a public policy discussion about carbon pricing and a carbon tax?  Or did they think “adaptation plan” meant some kind of GHG reduction plan? If so, they are out of touch with the key concepts of climate policy in place since the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Back to the top.  The first clause is so sloppily worded it minimizes, rather than underscores, why 2 degrees global average temperature increase really matters.  Why start the sentence with something as weak as “agree with many Canadians and the International Energy Agency?” Why not mention “consensus of the world’s climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the commitment to avoid a global average temperature increase of 2 degrees C that Canada made in the Copenhagen Accord.”

Weak drafting is one thing, but the next part is much worse: “there is grave concern with the impacts of a 2 degrees rise in global average temperatures.”   There is grave concern? With the impacts?? That’s it?  How about an accurate statement, like this:

“Scientists have concluded that for human civilization to have reasonable odds of avoiding collapse due to the catastrophic impacts of runaway global warming, concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere must be held below those levels associated with a 2 degrees rise in global average temperature increase, as compared to pre-Industrialized levels.  In fact, in order to preserve Arctic ice, we should strive to keep global average temperature increases below a 1.5 degree rise.”

The way the NDP motion is worded it seems to assume we are going to have a 2 degree rise, and that there are grave concerns with impacts.  It fails to connect 2 degrees with the triggering of runaway global warming, which is a much bigger problem than the immediate impacts of 2 degrees on its own.

Then there’s the second clause.  This is a transparent attempt to wedge the Liberals on the issue.  That’s politics and I guess I should be used to it by now.  But when an issue is as important as whether our children have a liveable world, I am sick and tired of this petty garbage.  The Liberals have a lousy record on climate.  Chretien ratified Kyoto, full marks for that, but he did not put forward a plan. As Executive Director of Sierra Club of Canada, I spent years demanding action and criticizing the failure of the Liberals to act.  Then Paul Martin did act and his environment minister, Stephane Dion, put forward a credible plan in 2005.  And in 2006, Harper killed that plan.  That one phrase would not have caused me to vote against the motion, if there had been a call for real action to reduce GHG.  But predictably and tragically it reveals the real goal of the NDP opposition day motion: to make the Liberals look bad by writing a motion in a way the NDP knew the Liberals would vote against.

Why does that matter?  Well, it’s like this.  If you care about climate, you draft a motion in order to create the maximum possible opportunity for it to pass.  You don’t play stupid games.

The NDP did the same thing last week with the Canada-China Investment Treaty motion.  It rejected Liberal attempts to amend the motion such that the Liberals could vote with the NDP.  At least then, the motion was clear and I had no problem voting with the NDP, but I was furious that an issue as important as blocking ratification of the FIPA with China was sabotaged for the shortest term possible partisan gain. (And I was furious that the Liberals voted with the Conservatives… I was in a very “plague on both your Houses” mood.)

The climate crisis is a threat to our very survival.  It sickens me to see petty partisanship trump climate. For God’s sake, put forward motions that have a chance of passing and then twist arms in the Conservative caucus to get a motion that matters.

So that about covers why I couldn’t vote with the NDP.  I would have loved to have seen a unified group of MPs from all the Opposition Parties rise on principle and (hoping against hope) some of the Conservatives who understand the need for climate action might have voted with us to give the Parliamentary call for reductions in GHG a chance of passing.  But since tonight’s motion forgot to call for climate action, maybe we could take a run at a properly worded motion another day.

Dr. Hansen is not just someone who used to work at NASA. He was NASA’s top climate scientist. Thursday, I found this tribute to James Hansen that will give Canadians who do not know much about Dr. Hansen (and I guess that means Mr. Oliver, at least) a sense of his stature south of the border and globally. This tribute was written by another Joe — Joe Romm (1).

I don’t think I can improve upon it, and I ask you to read it. Joe Oliver said James Hansen should be “ashamed” for urging the President to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. He said Dr. Hansen has been “crying wolf.” Whatever your views on any particular pipeline, I ask you to read this. And then ask yourself how long we will tolerate having our highest ranking Canadian officials embarrass internationally by attacking the most courageous of scientists? It is we who are ashamed — of our government.

A Man For All Seasons: James Hansen Wins The Ridenhour Courage Prize
James Hansen was awarded the Ridenhour Courage Prize today. The Prize is “presented to an individual in recognition of his or her courageous and life-long defense of the public interest and passionate commitment to social justice.”

I was given the great privilege of introducing Hansen. This is what I prepared:
James Hansen is being honored today in part because he told Congress: “The global warming now is large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.”

The courageous part isn’t what he said, it’s when he said it — 25 years ago, during the sweltering summer of 1988. It was the first high-profile public statement by a US government scientist alerting the country to this grave threat.

Jim embodies the Ridenhour Courage Prize. When he was still NASA’s top climate scientist, he blew the whistle on government efforts to silence him — and others — on climate change.

Jim is a modern day Paul Revere … if Paul Revere’s midnight ride had taken place in 1750 and the message was, “The British are coming, The British are coming — in 25 years.”

Yes, climate change is a challenging story to tell. And Jim has actually been telling it publicly since 1981, when he published his first warning that led to a major New York Times story, headlined, “Study Finds Warming Trend That Could Raise Sea Levels.”

And yet carbon pollution has kept rising. We live in a spineless world, where being scientifically right for over 30 years gives you no more credit with the national media than being a professional disinformer funded by the fossil fuel industry.

How spineless is this world? If a doctor used the best science to diagnose a smoker as having early-stage emphysema and the doctor did NOT urge the patient to start quitting cigarettes, he’d be charged with malpractice.

But if a climatologist uses the best science to diagnose an entire planet as having early-stage climate change, and he urges the world to start quitting fossil fuels, well, then he is labeled an alarmist or an extremist by industry-backed groups.

The truth is we all should be alarmed by the great moral crisis of our time. By destroying a livable climate we are stealing the future from our children and grandchildren and countless future generations.

To save this spineless world from itself, supplying the truth isn’t enough. You need to supply the spine, too. You need to be courageous. And so Jim has been forced by the times — and by his moral convictions — to become an activist.

There is a saying that applies to Jim, “One man with courage is a majority.”

How many scientists have spawned an entire movement?

Five years ago Jim explained that “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted,” we need to return carbon dioxide levels back to 350 parts per million. That led to Bill McKibben founding the group 350.org.

Then Jim said burning the tar sands would be “game over for the climate” — and that led to the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline — and the biggest protests and civil disobedience the climate movement had ever seen.

And because Jim has the courage of his convictions he has had the courage to be convicted himself — he’s been arrested 5 times during peaceful protests.

Fifty years ago this month, another great moral crusader was arrested for protesting — and he wrote a letter from his jail cell in Birmingham explaining why. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” wrote Martin Luther King Jr. on April 16, 1963. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Now more than ever, we are “tied in a single garment of destiny,” cloaked as a species in a protective climate that we are in the process of unraveling. And so the need for activism, the need for courage, the need to speak out, is as great as ever.

As King put it, “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

It is my singular honor to give you a man who will not have to repent, a man for all seasons, literally — the winner of the 2013 Ridenhour Courage Prize, Dr. James Hansen.

(1)From Wikipedia: Joseph J. Romm (born June 27, 1960) is an American author, blogger, physicist[1] and climate expert[2] who concentrates on methods of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming and increasing energy security through energy efficiency, green energy technologies and green transportation technologies.[3][4] In December 2008, Romm was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In March 2009, Rolling Stone magazine named Romm to its list of “100 People Who Are Changing America”.[5] In September 2009, Time magazine named him one of its “Heroes of the Environment (2009)”, calling him “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger”.[6]

Romm is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he writes and maintains their climate blog, Climate Progress. In 2008, Time magazine named Romm’s blog one of the “Top 15 Green Websites”.[7] In 2009, Thomas L. Friedman, in his column in The New York Times, called Climate Progress “the indispensable blog”,[8] and in 2010, Time included it in a list of the 25 “Best Blogs of 2010″.[9] Romm also writes regularly for several energy and news websites.

In the 1990s, Romm served as Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy. Romm has published several books on global warming and energy technology. Technology Review wrote that his December 2006 book, Hell and High Water, “provides an accurate summary of what is known about global warming and climate change, a sensible agenda for technology and policy, and a primer on how political disinformation has undermined climate science.”[10] Romm’s 2010 book, Straight Up, released in April 2010, is a selection of his blog postings since 2007.

Debate has been about how best to export raw, virtually unprocessed bitumen — as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the eastern half of Canada depends on imports of foreign oil from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, and Norway. As Gordon Laxer of the Parkland Institute tried to point out to a Parliamentary committee (before the Conservative chair ordered him to stop talking and stormed out of the room), Canada has no energy security.

I feel some responsibility for this shift in debate, as I was the first political leader to point out that there was something wrong with the picture.

RELATED: Sign the petition for an oil-free coast.

Unlike the US, we have no Strategic Petroleum Reserves. If there was a blockade of foreign oil or an economic embargo, those in Eastern Canada would have to wait for tankers to bring them bitumen for processing through the Panama Canal and up the eastern seaboard. As bizarre as that sounds, it was the solution offered by a Suncor executive when asked in committee about the vulnerability of eastern Canada to embargos.

Oppositional Canada

The irony is that the dividing line of foreign oil to the east and Alberta oil for the west was the result of deliberate government policy—aimed at helping the Alberta oil and gas sector. Back in 1961, the National Oil Policy decreed that eastern Canadians (east of the Ottawa River) would only receive imported oil while those in the West had to purchase Alberta product. By deliberate policy, Eastern Canadians became dependent on foreign oil, while Alberta oil was consumed by those in western provinces and exported to the US. Now it is time to think like a country.

The Solution: Shipping East?

However, the current proposal also makes no sense. Former New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna has proposed shipping unprocessed bitumen to St John, New Brunswick, to put it in tankers to export it from there. Others are proposing refining it in New Brunswick.

The first decision point is Enbridge’s application to reverse its Number 9 pipeline. This pipeline was built in the 1970s and had originally flowed west to east. It was reversed in the 1990s as the markets favoured cheaper foreign oil.

Now, Enbridge is applying to reverse it once again, running a different product, dilbit, from west to east. The request to the National Energy Board is being considered in two stand-alone applications; Line 9A (Sarnia to North Westover) and Line 9B to Montreal.

From there the bitumen would likely go south through New England. When I was in Washington DC, I heard from quite a few Congressmen and Senators that they do not want those pipelines over their territory.

Bitumen

The nature of bitumen and diluents in pipelines is a critical issue in why the Green Party oppose pipelines of unprocessed product to either coastline. So, before talking about the direction of pipelines, we need to talk about the product.

Even after the extensive and intensive process of extracting the viscous material known as bitumen from the soil in which it is found (generally about 10% by volume), it is still not processed to even the level of crude oil. Crude oil can flow. Bitumen cannot. It has the consistency of peanut butter, so needs to be mixed with something else to flow. That something else is called ‘diluent’—a mix of undisclosed chemicals. The most commonly used diluent is a natural gas condensate, similar to Naptha. The public does not know the make-up of any particular diluent. Some have more benzene than others—benzene is a well-documented carcinogen.

The resulting so-called dilbit product is about 30% diluents and 70% bitumen. We do know a lot more about dilbit than we used to. And we did a lot of that learning through the 2010 Enbridge dilbit spill in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. We know it both floats and sinks; that it is far harder and far more expensive to clean-up than unprocessed conventional crude. The Kalamazoo spill is still not cleaned up.

Meanwhile a debate rages about whether dilbit is more likely to cause pipeline failure. Cornell University found that between 2007 and 2010 pipelines carrying dilbit had a spill-rate three times higher than pipelines carrying conventional crude. Oil sands products have a higher sulfur and a higher acidic content than conventional crude and those properties could explain its increased corrosive nature.

This finding led to the Department of Natural Resources to commissioning a study by a group called Alberta Innovates Technology Futures (ATIF). That study compared dilbit and conventional crudes and concluded the types of corrosive compounds between the two products were comparable. So we have labwork versus the real life rate of spills in US pipelines. At the moment, despite what Harper’s Cabinet ministers claim, the science on the corrosive nature of dilbit is not settled.

Meanwhile, if local residents along the Number 9 pipeline wish to speak before the NEB hearings, or even submit a letter, they are required to fill out a 10-page form, and are also encouraged to submit references and a resume! This is an NEB effort to meet the new requirements imposed by the horrific overhaul of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act that took place last year in the Omnibus Budget Bill (C-38).

Unlike the previous CEAA, which was premised on a fundamental commitment to rights of public participation, the Harperized CEAA restricts access to only those ‘directly affected’. The NEB has made this restriction even worse by demanding that any citizens who want to make comments, fill out the forms and apply within a two-week period—which will close before this article will be in print.

Refineries In Alberta

So, what should be done? The best environmental, economic and climate outcome would be to slow down the boom-and-bust cycle of constant expansion in the oil sands. What the late Peter Lougheed used to describe as the ‘traffic jam’ of feverish expansion in the oilsands prevents the construction of ancillary infrastructure, like upgraders and refineries.

The hyper-inflationary bubble that sits on northern Alberta is what makes it cheaper for Big Oil to build a $7 billion pipeline to Texas, rather than build facilities in Alberta. Any reasonable carbon plan would set a level of managed growth for oil sands production—say 2 million barrels of oil a day (more than the current 1.7 million barrels, but less than Harper’s goal of 6 million barrels of oil a day). That level of production could cool down the capital and labour markets enough to build upgraders and refineries near the resource. Then, we could be talking about shipping—by pipeline, truck or train—a finished product whose properties are better understood. Shipping a product with a far lower risk of environmental impact in the event of spills.

If we are thinking like a country, we should get Alberta oil to Eastern Canada, but we should not ship bitumen + diluents.

The really stunning aspect of the announcement was that the media largely fell for it – as though something serious was being announced.  The event that went unreported at the time, that one of the emergency response vessels for tanker spills, scheduled to be part of the press conference backdrop, ran aground on its way.  It is the perfect metaphor for a large non-event.

The March 2012 budget had actually included almost everything re-announced a year later in March 2013.  It included pipeline inspections and new tanker regulations.  Not only was the announcement duplicated in the 2012 budget the new measures were repeatedly cited as though they were part of the budget omnibus bill C-38.  Since C-38 was over 400 pages long, perhaps they did not expect anyone to read it. Maybe they never read it themselves, as Minister Oliver trumpeted then, “Mr. Speaker, the bill will do a great deal to protect the environment… As I mentioned in my remarks, tankers will have to be double-hulled, there will be mandatory pilotage, there will be enhanced navigation, there will be aerial surveillance and additional measures will be taken in particular cases when necessary.”

None of this was in C-38.  It is, in fact, what he announced in Vancouver on March 18, 2013.  I imagine he wondered why he had such a strong sense of déjà-vu.

The only new aspect of the announcement was of an expert panel to review tanker safety and to study the specific risks of a spill involving bitumen and diluents.  As the entire Enbridge Joint Review Panel hearing has been dealing with a product it does not plan to ship  — crude oil – it is certainly worthwhile finding out how bitumen and diluents will behave.

At the Vancouver press conference, Oliver and Lebel trumpeted that they had tabled for First Reading  the Safeguarding Canada’s Seas and Skies Act.  I sought it out to read it.  Its introduction for First Reading had been splashless. Once again, I was underwhelmed.  The bill is merely a series of housekeeping measures. The “safeguarding skies” piece deals with aviation and aeronautics, through changes to inspections of aviation accidents and aeronautic indemnities.  There is no environmental aspect to the “skies” component.  Then there are the amendments related to “seas.”  The Marine Act is amended to change the date for the approval of a new director of a port authority. The only oil-spill related components are in the Marine Liability Act.  The act is brought into compliance with the 2010 International Convention on Liability and Compensation for Damage in connection with the Carriage and Noxious Substances by Sea.   So, nothing about double-hulled tankers.

The reality is that since 1993, all new tankers are required, by international agreement, to be double-hulled. According to a great summary on the issue by Mitch Anderson in September 27, 2010 The Tyee, (“No, Double Hull Tankers Do Not Ensure ‘Total Safety,’”) there were only 50 single-hulled tankers operating anywhere on the planet that year.  None were allowed in North American waters.

Do double hulls eliminate the risk of oil spills?  Not actually.  Despite the exuberance of Joe Oliver’s rhetoric, double-hulls possess no magical powers.  Their use has not ended the risk of accidents and oil spills.  Collisions with barges and freighters have caused oil spills of millions of litres in ports around the world.  Double hulls can be sliced open and oil spills out.

The Transport Canada website was prettied up for the announcement, with a “fact sheet” transparently designed to create the impression the British Columbia coast is routinely plied by hundreds of super-tankers.

Here are some of the claims from the Transport Canada website:

• Oil tankers have been moving safely and regularly along Canada’s West Coast since the 1930’s.
• In 2009-2010, there were about 1500 tanker movements on the West Coast….
• A federal moratorium off the coast of BC applies strictly to oil and natural gas exploitation and development, not to tanker storage or movement.

In fact, the 1972 moratorium was precisely against oil tanker traffic along BC’s north coast.  That was a federal-provincial moratorium.  Most readers will not notice the subtlety of the website reference to the “federal moratorium.”   Moreover, the 1500 tanker “movements” refers to what Transport Canada defines as “every time a ship (or vessel) commences or ceases to be underway. Underway is defined as a vessel that is not at anchor, or made fast to the shore, or aground.”  And by tanker, they mean “a cargo ship fitted with tanks for carrying liquid in bulk.” Not oil tankers.   In 2011, the total number of oil tankers in and out of the Port of Vancouver was 82.  None of them were super-tankers and none of them operate without risk.

In the on-going war of words to get super-tankers carrying bitumen crude into our waters, it is amazing any media covered Joe Oliver’s announcement as if anything meaningful had been added to the discussion.

Originally printed in the Hill Times.

But when those same attitudes and willful blindness form the basis of federal government policy as expressed by our federal Minister of Natural Resources, it is a sign of negligent disregard for the public interest. It is unacceptable.

This is what Oliver told the editorial board of La Presse: “I think that people aren’t as worried as they were before about global warming of two degrees…Scientists have recently told us that our fears (on climate change) are exaggerated.”

Thank goodness the editorial board at La Presse knows how to ask questions. They pressed him to name any scientist who thinks our fears are exaggerated. He couldn’t.

The extent to which the minister doesn’t know his brief was further exposed when the editorial board asked him about the International Energy Agency’s annual World Energy Outlook’s concern for limiting carbon. Oliver had actually quoted from the report to justify his claim that fossil fuel production must ramp up to meet demand. When asked if he had not seen that the same report had made it clear that avoiding a two degree global average temperature increase is essential, and that in order to do so, two-thirds of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground and not be accessed before 2050, Oliver drew a blank.

“I have no idea, I didn’t read that conclusion,” said Oliver.

Well, that’s like saying, “I opened Moby Dick and I never saw that line ‘Call me Ishmael.’”

Mr. Oliver must simply never have read the report at all. He must have had the selected quotes from briefing notes because to open the report at all is to see an executive summary in which climate concerns are front and centre.

“Successive editions of this report have shown that the climate goal of limiting warming to 2°C is becoming more difficult and more costly with each year that passes,” said the report. “If action to reduce CO2 emissions is not taken before 2017, all the allowable CO2 emissions would be locked-in by energy infrastructure existing at that time. Rapid deployment of energy-efficient technologies … would postpone this complete lock-in to 2022, buying time to secure a much-needed global agreement to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.”

I keep trying to determine if Stephen Harper has ever had a briefing on climate science. This revealing exchange with the editorial board of La Presse confirms that if Joe Oliver has ever had a science briefing, he wasn’t listening.

Originally in the Huffington Post.

I remember the struggle to develop a treaty to combat drought and encroaching deserts. Canada was one of the few countries in the lead to negotiate the treaty. I was not intimately involved, but I knew people who were. When it was signed in 1994, I was elated. Along with the conventions on climate and biodiversity, the treaty to combat drought addressed a global and pressing concern. It was clearly related to climate change, but was more regionally specific. And, although desertification is not a current threat to Canada, certainly drought is.

There had been no inkling or rumour that Stephen Harper wanted to exit another global environmental law. Given that the only treaty from which Canada has ever withdrawn, since 1867, was Kyoto, the cavalier way in which this news leaked out—posted on a Foreign Affairs website and noticed by Canadian Press— added to the shock. That we gave no notice to the secretariat for the Convention was further evidence of our contempt for both the United Nations and the threat posed by climate induced drought and desertification.

In Question Period the next day, Ralph Goodale (former Liberal finance minister and now only the MP for Wascana) posed an excellent question in which he linked other recent Harper administration decisions reducing the Prairies’ preparedness for drought. He charged ‘Maniacal front-line cuts have killed PFRA (the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration), which had world-class Canadian brainpower on soil and water conservation. Conservatives vandalized community pastures, the prairie tree farm and Experimental Lakes Area. Now Canada is the only country in the world sneaking out the back door on the UN Convention Against Drought.’

I was grateful Goodale noted cuts to programmes put in place after the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, as I have been trying to draw attention to them. What Harper has against hedgerows and water conservation in the Prairies is certainly a mystery that has angered Prairie farmers. The Prime Minister’s response was spun to create the impression that the convention on drought and desertification was akin to a poorly run charity, in which aid dollars were poorly spent: ‘This organization spends less than 20% of the funds that we send are actually spent on programming. (sic) The rest goes to various bureaucratic measures. That is not an effective way to spend taxpayer money.’

‘This organization?’ The Prime Minister is speaking of a treaty, within which every other country on earth is making some level of contribution, financial and otherwise. How much were we spending? An astonishingly low pittance… $290,000/year. Admittedly that is a nice amount of money if you are collecting for a new school gymnasium, but it is chump change in the federal budget. We approve more than that routinely by unanimous consent for Parliamentary committee travel. Equated with those things the Prime Minister thinks are a good use of taxpayer funds, things like renting Pandas at $1 million/year, the drought treaty was a bargain.

Canada’s diplomatic corps is shocked. Former Ambassador to the United Nations, former Deputy Minister of National Defence and victim of a terrorist kidnapping in Mali, Robert Fowler, sent an email to the media. Calling our withdrawal from the treaty ‘a departure from global citizenship,’ here’s what he said:

‘It (the Harper administration) has taken climate-change denial, the abandonment of collective efforts to manage global crises and disregard the pain and suffering of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa (among many others) to quite a different level.’

Responding to Foreign Minister John Baird’s defence that Canada won’t ‘go along to get along,’ Fowler continued:

‘No, by jingo, we’re not going to go along to get along! Such vainglorious nose-thumbing at the international community’s efforts to tame a very present threat to hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest and most desperate is nothing short of incomprehensible.’

Another former Ambassador to the United Nations, Paul Heinbecker, agreed that the move was both inexplicable and bound to confirm to the international community that Canada cared nothing for climate action, nor for the fate of Africa.

The UN itself was shocked. Noting that Canada will now be the only nation on earth not part of the convention, it, in typically understated diplomat-speak, called Canada’s decision ‘regrettable.’

It turns out our notice of intent was sent on January 14. The treaty requires only a 90-day period for full withdrawal so we exit the treaty on April 14, right in the middle of an important scientific review of the threat of desertification and drought, running April 9-19. ‘The next gathering of the scientific conference … is expected to deliver a major breakthrough by presenting the first ever cost-benefit analysis of desertification and sustainable land management,’ an UNCCD statement had commented, of the review and of Canada’s withdrawal.

‘Canada played crucial roles in both processes. Crucially, these processes have also moved the actions taken by parties to a result-based management approach where performance and impact are not only measured using indicators, but also assessed and monitored every two years.’

The rumours in Ottawa is that all our multilateral commitments are under review. I have heard well-connected folks express fear that we may withdraw from the United Nations Environment Programme and UNESCO. To block further erosion of our role in the world, we need to ensure that the reaction to this cutting and running from the problems of the world will not disappear as a one-day headline.