Accepted wisdom

I’m soon to be back working in politics, so I’ve been thinking about issues. The accepted wisdom is typically that: “The environment and health care are likely to set Canada’s political table well into the future”.  That’s according to a recent “poll” by the Canadian Medical Association.

Bull. Green issues are a fad.

Do you remember globalization? Once upon a time it was THE major issue. Books, magazines, lefty protests, all were consumed by it. But it seemed to peak at around the time of the Genoa riots. Since then – it’s been dead to the public.

Look below, this is the Zeitgeist on global warming. The zeitgeist tracks the frequency of Google searches at the top and media coverage at the bottom. Do you see the trend?

That CMA claim from above came from a poll released about a week ago. Look past the headline though and what will you find?

In the poll, 22 per cent of Canadians cited “environment” or “pollution” as the issue that “should receive the greatest attention of Canada’s leaders.” Another six per cent mentioned climate change and one per cent cite the Kyoto agreement. The CMA bundled these answers together.

But 15 per cent of Canadians cited war in Afghanistan, war in the Middle East or some variation on the same theme as their top concern. A further seven per cent said the military was their top issue. And two per cent cited terrorism. Bundle those answers and they total 24 per cent. Given that the poll’s margin of error is 3.2 percentage points, that’s not only in the same ballpark, it’s a tie game.

UPDATE: As if on queue:

From the National Post: While the punditocracy may share the opposition’s belief that the next election will be fought on the environment and the military — and that those issue favour the Conservatives’ challengers — both groups are simply drinking each other’s bath water. Voters will surprise them both.

Go along to get along

I haven’t written anything about adaptation for a while. Adaptation to Global Warming is something of a hobby horse for me. Every political conversation I get into ends with me getting back to this topic.

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA*) – a conservative think tank - pegs the price of Kyoto at $165,000,000,000 per year. Considering that Canada’s Kyoto response called for 5 billion dollars in new spending – the 165 billion dollar number seems credible.

So with that number in mind what should we do?

Well first consider the problem. The world is getting warmer and this is likely caused or worsened by human activity. It will continue getting warmer, no matter what we do. Kyoto will only slow the warming. In the meantime, islands across the Pacific will be flooded, storms in south Asia will be more devastating, and crop failures and water shortages everywhere will be more frequent. And Kyoto will do nothing to stop any of these things.

So where do we spend the money? Do we use it to slow global warming, or do we use it to help the poorest victims of it, adapt?

The natural question you should have right now is why not do both? Why is this an either/or situation? Why? Because many of the Kyoto cheerleaders have made it an either/or situation.

Al Gore:

We have to solve it (global warming) and there are some people who urge adaptation instead of prevention, and that formulation must be rejected.

Greenpeace:

When your house is on fire, the first thing you do is put the fire out – not try and get used to the heat.

The claim from their end is that if we focus on adaptation we will ignore mitigation. That didn’t need to be so, but it is, thanks to the political climate they have shaped. Picture if you will the environment minister standing before parliament with a budget that included equal amounts of cash for adaptation and Kyoto-style mitigation. It would be like the clean air fiasco all over again. Opposition politicians would be falling over themselves to be the first to condemn the government for not being serious about climate change, or for lacking urgency, or for betraying Kyoto – or for any of the myriad of slurs heaped on the government for taking action on any environmental issue other than implementing the Kyoto protocol. As long as there are more green voters than science graduates, then it will pay to be an extremist and to make mitigation and adaptation an either/or thing. But doesn’t all of this also mean that if we focus on mitigation we will ignore adaptation?

In which case, if we can only have one or the other, which is better for people? Mitigation without adaptation, or adaptation without mitigation?

I would say the better one is that which keeps more people alive in the here and now – and that would be adaptation. For a more lucid explanation of this take a listen to an old interview – it’s Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore on the Penn Jillette show.

Listen below or download it here (right click and ’save link/target as’)

Environmental Eschatology

This image describes what happens after humans become extinct. It’s David Suzuki’s wet dream*:

Click image to enlarge.

[*Gross image. Sorry.]

Adpatation – Adaptation – Adaptation

Southern Greenland

I can’t say that word enough – I wish politicians would start saying it too. Adaptation to Global Warming, not denying it, not futilely fighting it, not posing for heart-felt pictures next to it, and not arguing about who or what caused it – but adapting to it. The seas will rise with Kyoto or without it, the plan isn’t aimed at stopping global warming in the short term, but in the long term – a hundred years out. What about the next 40 years? Think of what all this Kyoto money could do to help a country like Bangladesh cope with rising seas. Global warming is good for a lot of us – Canada included – maybe instead of fighting with the earth, we should take the spoils offered to us by her, and use them to help those that will face greater challenges? The people of Greenland have the right idea:

“It’s good for me,” said Ernst Lund, a lanky young man who is one of 51 farmers raising sheep on the southern tip of Greenland. His animals scramble over the cold granite hills of a dramatic fjord, his farm isolated from the nearest town by a long boat ride threading past drifting mounds of ice, followed by a jolting truck trip along seven miles of gravel road.

“I can keep the sheep out two weeks longer to feed in hills in the autumn. And I can grow more hay. The sheep get fatter,” he said.

You did it

Doesn’t everybody know yet? If it’s warmer, it’s global warming; if it’s colder it’s global warming – somehow. Anything in fact that is either predictable or unpredictable is global warming.

To quote the organizer of a failed polar expedition (they had to quit because it was too cold):

“They were experiencing temperatures that weren’t expected with global warming,” Atwood said. “But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability.”

Do you know why the data doesn’t back up the claims that this is the hotest it’s ever been? Global warming.

The data here. courtesy SDA.

The mainstream view.