The Government of Canada is the Harper Government when an official press release reflects well on Stephen Harper. Any other time the Harper Government is, well, just the Government of Canada.
And so it was the latter late Tuesday, when the Government of Canada gave its conditional green light to Enbridge’s controversial Northern Gateway Pipeline project, which will carry oil sands crude from Alberta to a marine terminal in Kitimat, B.C., where supertankers will carry it to Asia.
There were some strings attached, namely the 209 conditions recommended in December by a Joint Review Panel established by the Minister of the Environment and National Energy Board. The panel’s “rigorous science-based review” concluded that the project was in the public interest – that the benefits outweighed the costs, be they catastrophic oil spills or other serious environmental harms.
And who can argue with the science? Even more, who’s going to argue with rigorous science? (Though just how rigorous the panel review was is a matter of intense disagreement).
In case you didn’t know, Stephen Harper loves science – when it serves his agenda. Late last month, during an interview with the CBC about the importance of vaccinations, Harper rightly spoke out against those who “go off on their own theories and not listen to the scientific evidence.”
"Don't indulge your theories,” Harper said. “Think of your children,” he appealed. “Listen to the experts," he lectured, with Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation nodding in agreement by his side.
If only Harper spoke in such terms and with such conviction when addressing climate change. Is it an indulged theory when 97 per cent of peer-reviewed global warming studies published between 1991 and 2011 acknowledge climate change as a human-caused crisis?
Should we not think of our children when we make economically motivated decisions today that will contribute to negative environmental, health and economic outcomes tomorrow? And should we not listen to those experts – trained climate scientists and public health officials – when they warn us, in an increasingly vocal way, about the implications of those decisions?
As Corporate Knights reported in its most recent issue, climate change is already bringing more extreme weather and new diseases to Canadian communities, and public health officials are worried that healthcare institutions and workers aren’t prepared for it.
And we’re not just talking physical health. The psychological toll, in the form of anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses, is currently poorly understood but expected to grow. This will have a serious impact on worker productivity.
“Some of these health impacts are already underway,” warned an 800-page report released by the White House last month as part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. “As threats increase, our ability to adapt to future changes may be limited.”
And who’s behind this report? Only 300 experts with oversight, in part, by the National Academy of Sciences. A group worth listening to? We had a group like that. It was called the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy. Harper killed it when he didn’t like what they were saying.
That the government has chosen to give little weight to, if not completely ignore, such climate science is bound to backfire.
“It’s official,” said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip shortly after the Northern Gateway approval was announced. “The war is on.”
Ben West of ForestEthics Advocacy said Harper will “regret” trying to push such a politically toxic project through British Columbia, particularly with a 2015 election just around the corner.
“There will be court cases, and if it comes to it, peaceful civil disobedience, as over 20,000 people have pledged to work with First Nations to stop this project,” said Greenpeace Canada spokesman Mike Hudema.
Author and environmental Tzeporah Berman, who helped spearhead clearcut logging protests in B.C.’s Clayoquot Sound in 1993 – then the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history – said Northern Gateway protests will be much bigger.
Cellphones, the Internet, social networking – such technology just didn’t exist the way it does today. Northern Gateway, said Berman on Twitter, “will make Clayoquot look like a walk in the park.”
Both government opposition parties, meanwhile, vowed they would scrap the project if elected.
Despite the Harper government’s approval Tuesday, many say it’s doubtful the project will ever get built. The number of conditions placed on the approval, said Environmental Defence’s Tim Gray, “is as good as a no.”
