RSSHarper is no leader
Nov 28
I liked Scott’s recent posts on Canada’s unfortunate position in the world with respect to Climate Change action: Leading from behind and What real “leadership” on climate change looks like.
It’s so frustrating to live in a country where the people are clearly in favour of doing so much more than we are, yet our PM thinks he can get away with lip-service to action. As we saw with the recent 3-4x increase in Green Party votes in the recent Ontario election, things are changing. I hope this issue unseats Mr. Harper or at a minimum forces him into more action. He can’t get away with inaction for much longer.
Dec 02, 2007 @ 09:43:00
You do realize, of course, that the “real leadership” displayed by the Kevin Rudd Labor Government-elect in Australia has indicated that they will not ratify the new round of Kyoto plans unless the developing world (i.e. China, India) also agrees to binding targets on GHGs.
To me, this position is largely indistinguishable from that of the Canadian Conservative government. Harper has stated “Canada’s view is we need binding targets on all nations.”
Dec 02, 2007 @ 13:35:11
Well, first, Rudd is going to ratify Kyoto – a major difference vs. Harper.
Second, you’re missing 90% of the substance by saying both of their positions are the same since they both want targets for all nations. Nobody is disputing that, and I’m sure that’s part of most peoples positions. Harper, however, is taking the “we will not act until you act first” position which is not the definition of leadership on the issue. From what I’ve seen of Rudd his position seems to say they are committing to targets and they want developing nations to have targets as well.
What Harper is doing is dragging his feet. If Canada and the US stood up and said “Yes, we’re going to commit to these targets (whatever those are) and we want all other countries to follow us” these negotiations would go a lot faster. But, when you have these few conservative governments of developed countries with the position of “We will not commit until everyone else does” that’s about equivalent to school-yard politics.