What is the link between this:
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“The Climate Change Performance Index,” published annually by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe, lists Canada among the world’s worst at no. 58
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And this:
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It’s another sign that as science- and policy-based approaches lose credibility, extreme tactical responses to the climate change issue – and the related controversies from pipelines to coal ports – become more rationalized.
And that’s just not on the environmental side. Here’s today’s New York Times:
Hard-Nosed Advice From Veteran Lobbyist: ‘Win Ugly or Lose Pretty’
WASHINGTON — If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded.
The blunt advice from the consultant, Richard Berman … came as Mr. Berman solicited up to $3 million from oil and gas industry executives to finance an advertising and public relations campaign called Big Green Radicals.
The company executives, Mr. Berman said in his speech, must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups. And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” he said.
Both sides will justify more extreme tactics by the actions of the others, purposely creating nemesis out of caricature. But the real problem is that some elected leaders, notably some of ours, have decided climate-change is not just an issue worth ignoring but to actually make worse because we profit from it. That’s what the rating above tells us about Canada, which is committing itself to the biggest capital projects in its history for the purpose of accelerating the movement of carbon, while ignoring if not suppressing information and research about the consequences on our own environment.
As the impacts of climate change become more tangible, with the prospect of ever-worsening outcomes, the existential consequences will be unbearable. How can we reconcile the image of ourselves (and that which others have traditionally had of us as environmental stewards) with the reality of what we’re doing? How can the Province that led the world in crafting a near-ideal carbon tax become a carbon dealer to the world while rationalizing away the consequences?
That requires an embrace of cynicism and hypocrisy just to live with what we’re doing.
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Those who try to base arguments on science, who promote public policy solutions, who try to engage in nuanced debate with calculated trade-offs, well, they will less and less have the credibility or the energy to continue when the responses are more entrenched indifference and strategic reversals (good-bye Kyoto). The ground they cede, however, will be taken by those who can justify their excesses by the perceived consequences of inaction. And in turn be met by the excesses of those whose self-interest is threatened but hold levers of power they will justify using by the threats they exploit or manufacture.
In the meantime, expect more of this:
For now, “I’m not a scientist” is what one party adviser calls “a temporary Band-Aid” — a way to avoid being called a climate change denier but also to sidestep a dilemma. The reality of campaigning is that a politician who acknowledges that burning coal and oil contributes to global warming must offer a solution, which most policy experts say should be taxing or regulating carbon pollution and increasing government spending on alternative energy. But those ideas are anathema to influential conservative donors …
While the politicians debate, the scientific evidence linking weather extremes to climate change continues to mount. …For Mr. McKenna, the energy lobbyist and Republican adviser, the political future is clear. “We’re going to keep getting this question until we nail down a hard answer,” he said.
Or get nailed.
