Disparaging remarks

Premier Stelmach says that Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton disparage Alberta with their talk of carbon pricing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (See “Stelmach throws down gauntlet to Liberals, NDP; Premier invites leaders to defend cap-and-trade proposals to oil industry,” The Edmonton Journal, April 21, 2011).

If this is disparagement, I welcome it.

Not a day goes by that the media doesn’t report on at least one climate catastrophe around the world. In the same issue the Stelmach story appeared, The Journal published an article on the extent of the ice loss in the Arctic (“Six years of glacial melt nearly enough to fill Lake Erie,”).

Is the Premier not aware that our escalating use of fossil fuels is the main contributor to many of these events?

Evidently not. His advice to Ignatieff and Layton is that they forget any talk about reducing GHGs and focus instead on the economic benefits of the oilsands, and his advice to the electorate is that we vote for the Harper Party whose work on the environment earned them an F in the Sierra Club’s recent Environmental Report Card (the Liberals and the NDP got Cs, the Greens an A).

With all due respect to the Premier, we can do without this advice. How many more Lake Eries do we need to fill before politicians like Stelmach come to their senses and understand that we need aggressive action on climate change and we need it now?

Knox on the Green Party

Jack Knox says that if the Green Party doesn’t win a seat in the next election then their supporters should join another party and “work for change within” (see the Edmonton Journal, April 10, 2011).  

I’ve been trying to work for change within the Liberal party since 2006 when I signed on as a Dion delegate and went to the party convention in Montreal.

I was pleased when Dion won and even more pleased when he introduced as part of his 2008 election platform a carbon tax—for me an essential requirement of any serious plan to combat the greatest issue facing the world.

Today, to my disappointment, the Liberals have abandoned the tax, opting instead for a vaguely defined cap-and-trade and “cleaner oil sands development.”

So when I read Mr. Knox suggesting that the greens should join another party and work for change within, if May loses, I say good luck. Five years of working within the Liberal Party on climate change has made me feel like I’m going backwards on the issue.

I suggest a different strategy.

To those who are currently working within the big three for an effective policy on climate change, I say vote green. It will propel the issue forward, dramatically. Elizabeth May and one or two other green candidates winning a seat in the next election would cause a seismic shift in how the other parties approach climate change. It would make all your working within worthwhile.