Bad Canada

George Monbiot today published an article that has accused Canada of being one of the greatest threats to world peace. As a Canadian, I must say he is completely right, and he deserves our thanks for taking this stance.

As he documents, Canada is not only failing to live up to its agreements, or failing to propose reasonable targets for carbon emissions, we are actively engaged in the disruption of talks ahead of Copenhagen, and have attempted to create divisions within Europe. We signed Kyoto, but then declared we wouldn't live up to it (the only country to do so), we are proposing extremely feeble targets for Copenhagen, and we are actively working to sabotage the entire conference.

One of our largest sins, of course, is in the "development" of the tar sands. We are actively and deliberately destroying an entire province, wasting energy and water, and poisoning many of the native population, in order to turn this tar into oil. But Canada is a net exporter of oil, we do not need this oil for our own consumption. We produce it only in order to sell, primarily to the United States. We have a great opportunity here.

By shutting down the tar sands completely, we can accomplish many things. First of all, we would be able to dramatically reduce carbon emissions, improving our reputation, while also showing leadership to the world. We would have less oil to export, but this would also have several benefits. First, oil prices may rise, which would encourage more conservation and the use of alternatives, especially in the US. Secondly, the increased prices would offset any revenue lost by eliminating production from the tar sands.

From there, we could then pursue conservation ourselves, in order to reduce our use of conventional oil, which would allow us to further reduce carbon emissions, and also leave more oil in the ground for future generations. There are several other easy options we can take to reduce emissions, waste, and pollution which are currently being ignored. We can be a leader if we want to.

Additionally, because in Eastern Canada, most oil is imported, and in Western Canada, most is exported, we could also greatly increase efficiency by building a trans Canada pipeline for oil delivery. This would allow us to avoid exporting a product we then need to re-import. This would also have the benefit of creating jobs, and could perhaps be undertaken alongside an expansion of rail, including electrified rail, which would create even more jobs, as well as significantly reducing carbon emissions. Many of our autoworkers have lost their jobs and could likely be retrained to build trains instead of cars, and many idle factories could used be reused for this purpose.

Monbiot is right that Canada is the world's climate change bad guy right now. Some have even threatened to kick us out of the Commonwealth. If we fail to change our ways, in the future there may even be proposals to put in place sanctions against Canada. If we don't change, we will deserve this, and the world will need it. But we still have time to change and even lead. We have many ways to accomplish this, and our children and grandchildren will thank us for it. It is up to us what legacy we leave.