Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Conservative Environmental Policy

After putting the oh-so-lovable John Baird in charge of the Environment portfolio after a "do nothing" policy on the environment imploded, about all the Con$ have done is spray more hot air into the environment and sidestep doing anything.

Well...almost nothing. Via Allison over at Creekside, we get a particularly nasty little bit of destructiveness being done to Canada's lakes - simply by the fiat of declaring them "tailings containment areas".

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that those "tailings containment areas" are in fact toxic waste zones - and because these are existing lakes, those same tailings will inevitably escape beyond the so-called containment zone.

Conservative government - when you are absolutely clear that public policy is all about kneeling before big business interests.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It;s criminal for this to happen. When coupled with the Alberta government's handling of the tar sands, it shows how little interest the Conservatives have in the environment.

MAS

Anonymous said...

Big businesses are made up of people like you and I. Their interests are the same as the interests of society as a whole. Econ 101.

MgS said...

Sorry, anon@10:46, I disagree.

Big business does not live by the same ethics that I do personally - it cannot.

First of all, big business tends to be run by groups of people - which dramatically changes the fundamental dynamic with which decisions are made.

Second, businesses (esp. publicly traded ones) exist for the sole purpose of turning a profit. Money exists, but it is neither moral or ethical - it simply is.

Businesses will - and routinely do - pursue profit over doing the ethically "right thing" largely on the basis of cost - sometimes public outrage will provoke some change, but left to its own devices, the business will forge ahead with its attentions quietly focused upon its bottom line, regardless of the consequences to the world around them.

Reality 101.

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