Harper wins with climate change games

Dan Gardner

Special to Times Colonist
November 18, 2010

Does anyone remember the issue that Stephen Harper called "perhaps the
biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today"?

No, it wasn't terrorism. Or nuclear proliferation. Or the rickety global
financial system.

Come on. He said this only three years ago. Surely we are not such a
nation of amnesiacs and flavour-of-the-month media that we have forgotten
the prime minister warning citizens about the most terrible danger in the
world? Or maybe we are.

This matters because things are happening this month that say a great deal
about Harper.

What did Harper say is the biggest and scariest threat in a world of big
and scary threats? Climate change.

Yes, really. Harper said climate change is "perhaps the biggest threat to
confront the future of humanity today." He said that in 2007, only three
years ago. Technically, at least. Politically, it feels like the Edwardian
era.

"It's crystal clear," wrote the editor of the Globe and Mail, in January
2007, that "the environment will be the single most important issue of
2007." He was right. Canadians told pollsters climate change was their top
worry, by a big margin. Two-thirds of Canadians considered it a "very
serious" problem.

This surge in green sentiment was a problem for Harper. His 2006 campaign
platform hadn't even mentioned climate change. His environment minister,
Rona Ambrose, was a hapless rookie. Lots of Canadians doubted whether
Harper even accepted that climate change was real, let alone a major
threat. The Conservatives slumped in the polls.

So Harper got religion.

Ambrose was replaced by John Baird, the prime minister's personal pit
bull, which alarmed environmentalists until Baird explained how deeply and
passionately he felt about the fight against climate change.

Harper declared that climate change is "perhaps the biggest threat to
confront humanity today."

But talk is cheap. On substance, the government hardly budged. There were
some modest concessions, but nothing that remotely matched the rhetoric.
Most importantly, the government didn't put a price on carbon emissions.
That's the key. Nothing will change without it. And the government
wouldn't go there.

Environmentalists smelled a rat. At international conferences, the
Conservatives seemed to work with the Bush administration to forestall
serious change. When the government released its much-touted action plan,
Al Gore thunderously denounced it as "a complete and total fraud."

Stéphane Dion made the "green shift" the centrepiece of the Liberal
campaign in September 2008. But Harper countered with a proposal for a
cap-and-trade system -- to be constructed in concert with the American
government.

Then the financial system collapsed. The media forgot about climate
change. Public concern ebbed.

In the U.S. presidential election, both Barack Obama and John McCain
committed to a cap-and-trade system, but climate change was hardly
mentioned. When Obama took office, the recession and health care consumed
all his attention. Modest cap-and-trade legislation failed to pass this
summer.

Meantime, the Republican party swung hard right. Control of the House of
Representatives passed to Republicans who hear "Commie plot" instead of
"climate change." And then, with exquisite timing, Jim Prentice -- whose
biggest accomplishment was renting some pandas from China -- quit the
government and his job as environment minister. His replacement is John
Baird. Except this time, the job will only be part-time for Baird, which
demonstrates exactly how important it is to Harper.

So what does all this tell us about the prime minister? Two things. One,
his reputation as a master of political strategy is sometimes deserved.
Climate change really did jeopardize his government in 2007. He dodged the
danger. And he did it without actually doing anything he really didn't
want to do, like putting a price on carbon emissions.

The other thing we learned is that Harper will say anything to win.

But I suppose we knew that already.

dgardner@ottawacitizen.com