Dear Stephen: Get On With The Job!

Now that this report pretty much shoots to hell any of the classical climate change denialist tales, perhaps Stephen Harper will bloody well get on with the job we elected him to do.

In fact, I thought he made a start on the topic in yesterday's comments. Unfortunately, while he started off with:

“I think the first realistic step in any such plan will be to try over the next few years to stabilize emissions and obviously over the longer term to reduce them,” he said. “I don't think realistically we can tell Canadians: Stop driving your car; stop going to work; turn the heat off in the winter. These are not realistic solutions.”

Unfortunately, he also tried to turn it into partisan sniping:

It was against this stark backdrop that Mr. Harper lashed out at the three opposition parties for pursuing what he termed the “fantasy” that Canada's commitment to cut its greenhouse-gas releases under the Kyoto Protocol — a 6-per-cent reduction from 1990 levels by 2012 — can be met.

Apparently, Mr. Harper has never heard the old saw about "it is better to have tried and failed than to have not tried at all".

Everyone understands that the targets of something like Kyoto are unlikely to be achieved in any short order. However, I suggest that dealing with our impact on the globe we live on is a little like putting a country's economy on a "war footing". Some "traditional" sectors of the economy are going to suffer for a while as we focus our energies in a concentrated fashion on other topics.

Unlike an unwanted war (say Iraq...or Afghanistan...or Iran), I think you'll get a good deal more buy-in from Canadians if you focus on alternative power sources, updating the power grid, alternative heating systems (other than burning natural gas or fuel oil), and making those mechanisms not only real, but economically practical. (e.g. What would it cost to retrofit my house with a solar-based hot water heating system?)

Is it a big job? Yes. Is it an easy job? No. Will it require you to make some hard decisions about priorities? Absolutely. Will it piss of your base of financial support in Alberta? Probably. Suck it up, Princess. It's time to start showing some of that vaunted leadership that you are supposedly so incredibly awesome at.