'The most aggressive GHG reduction efforts undertaken by any economy in the world'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 1:24 PM - 9 Comments

Andrew Leach explains what Environment Minister Peter Kent has to sort out if we’re to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets.

With these challenges in mind, Mr. Kent’s decisions will determine whether or not we are in a position to meet our Copenhagen commitments, and determine either the costs we incur to meet our targets or the costs we incur as a result of not meeting them. Meeting them will require the most aggressive GHG reduction efforts undertaken by any economy in the world, and the challenge gets tougher with every day we do not act. Not meeting them may limit access to markets for our exported products and access to capital for our investment projects. Inaction could also provide other nations with justification for the imposition of low carbon fuel standards or border adjustment tariffs on our products.

A never-ending journey of a thousand miles begins with a thousand first steps

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 13, 2010 at 9:10 AM - 66 Comments

Environment Minister John Baird, this weekend, on the Cancun accord. “This represents the first step to a single, new legally binding agreement … A first step.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, last week, on the Copenhagen accord. “Mr. Speaker, the Copenhagen accord was only a first step.”

Environment Minister Jim Prentice, last February, on the submission of Canada’s emission targets to the Copenhagen accord. “We took our first step down that road on Sunday, January 31, 2010.”

Environment Minister John Baird, three years ago, on the Bali climate talks. “With the United States now signed on to this framework the results of this conference show progress and we see that as an important first step.”

Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, four years ago, on the Clean Air Act. “After more than a decade of inaction on the environment by the previous government, Canada’s Clean Air Act is the first step in turning things around to protect the health of Canadians.”

Headline of news release from the office of Environment Minister Stephane Dion, five years ago, on the coming into force of Kyoto targets. “Achieving Our Kyoto Targets – A First Step Toward a Greener Canada”

Environment Minister David Anderson, nine years ago, on the Kyoto Protocol. “The Kyoto Protocol is only the first step on a long road towards implementing an effective solution to climate change.”

Nordic style obsession

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Images/ Phaidon/ Erik Refner/The New York Times

Last weekend, René Redzepi, the handsome 32-year-old frontman for the new Nordic chic, charmed a packed audience in Toronto with stories from Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant he co-founded in 2004 that catapulted to the top of the culinary pantheon this year when it knocked Spain’s El Bulli from its No. 1 position on S. Pellegrino’s “World’s 50 Best Restaurants” list.

Now there’s a three-month wait for one of its 12 tables in a serene room in a converted warehouse. There, diners sup on Redzepi’s wildly inventive compositions fashioned from ingredients sourced in the harsh Nordic landscape—bulrushes, birch sap, hay, puffin eggs, pig’s blood, weeds. Noma is heralded for reframing “gourmet” by taking local, sustainable fare from the bottom of the food chain and elevating it to the top, while conveying a sense of “place.” The restaurant is itself a contained ecosystem focused on the authentic and handmade: all food served is smoked, pickled, dried, grilled, salted, and baked in-house, down to vinegar and spirits. Explaining his mission, Redzepi sounds like a philosopher-poet: “The challenge for me is to telegraph the actual flavour of the field and sea, the narrative of the dish in your mouth,” he told Maclean’s.

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As to the reality of climate change

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 1:39 PM - 46 Comments

The former foreign affairs minister makes the case for skepticism.

Asked, via e-mail, whether the Prime Minister believes in “anthropogenic (or man-made) global warming,” the Prime Minister’s Office passes along the following transcript of an exchange from Mr. Harper’s closing press conference in Copenhagen late last year.

Reporter: Prime Minister your party in the past has talked about… questioned the science of climate change and there was renewed talk of that this week. President Obama gave a really strong statement in favor of the science of climate change. Where do you stand on that now?

Harper: Well we’ve been very clear. The preponderance of scientific evidence and opinion is that climate change is a very real challenge. The science continues to evolve. As you know, we’ve had some controversy recently because the science is not uniform, not every scientist agrees on every detail. But we are guided by the preponderance of the evidence. And that is absolutely clear. But ultimately leaders have to translate the necessity of dealing with the challenge in the science of climate change with the very real impacts that trying to deal with it will have on our economy. And we should not try and kid people on this. I know people… there’ll be people running out there saying targets are not hard enough. But let me assure you what we and others are committed to do over the next decade will have real impacts and real challenges on players and the Canadian economy, but we’ll obviously work with them to ensure that we balance these objectives of environmental protection and progress with economic growth.

Too ugly to ignore? (Updated)

By Chris Sorensen and Colin Campbell - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 4:15 PM - 46 Comments

UPDATE (Feb. 1, 2010): Ottawa has sent a shot across the bow of the companies operating in Alberta’s oil sands by saying they must do their part to help Canada shed its dirty image when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Speaking before a group of business leaders in Calgary on Monday, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said the rapid development of the oil sands has contributed to a negative international perception of Canada and is at odds with the “clean energy superpower” image that it aspires to project to the world.

Many had expected the government to give the oil sands a break in any climate change program, but Prentice said that operators will be expected work with Ottawa and Alberta to help the country meet revised emissions targets that are part of the Copenhagen climate change accord. Canada’s new emissions targets, announced by Prentice over the weekend, are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent below 2005 levels. That’s less than the previous target of 20 per cent below 2006 levels, but in line with targets set by the U.S. government. Prentice added, however, that the federal government still supports oil sands development and won’t adopt any specific measures unless the U.S. does first.

*****

If Canadians learned anything from the bickering at the Copenhagen climate change summit, it’s that our outsized appetite for energy and the ugly image of the Alberta oil sands—sprawling open-pit mines, belching smokestacks, murky tailings ponds—has bestowed upon us the unfamiliar role of environmental villain. And, justified or not, the scrutiny is only going to get worse in a year when Canada will host G8 and G20 summits and the Olympics.

The federal government has so far dismissed the characterization as the work of a few fringe environmental groups, but make no mistake: the oil sands are fast becoming a political problem for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and one that can’t be ignored indefinitely. “I think Canada is going to have to do something about the oil sands, not just because of the international pressure, but because the unconstrained growth will make it so difficult for us to reach the targets we’ve set for ourselves,” said a member of Ottawa’s climate change panel and Copenhagen conference attendee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. (He was referring to the government’s stated target of reducing emissions by 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020, not previous Kyoto targets.)

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Let's consider the prorogue from Stephen Harper's side

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 4:28 PM - 112 Comments

Canadians have been hard on the PM since he made the decision to “prorogue,” and not just because doing so forced some of us to learn a new word. We don’t like that he’s treating parliamentarians with contempt and disdain. After all, that’s our job.

But let’s try to see things from Stephen Harper’s perspective. Yes, he abruptly shut down the institutions of our democracy over the holidays for a second straight year. (Once more and it will become a Christmas tradition on par with watching It’s a Wonderful Life and trimming Mike Duffy.) And yes, he didn’t even bother to cross the street to visit the Governor General—he just picked up the phone and ordered the No. 2 from Rideau Hall: prorogation with a side of crazy bread.
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Why climate change is hot hot hot

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 11:10 AM - 259 Comments

According to the CIA’s analysis, “detrimental global climatic change” threatens “the stability of most nations.” And, alas, for a global phenomenon, Canada will be hardest hit. The entire Dominion from the Arctic to the 49th parallel will be under 150 feet of ice.

Oh, wait. That was the last “scientific consensus” on “climate change,” early seventies version, as reflected in a CIA report from August 1974, which the enterprising author Maurizio Morabito stumbled upon in the British Library the other day. If only the impending ice age had struck as scheduled and Scandinavia was now under a solid block of ice. Instead, the streets of Copenhagen are filled with “activists” protesting global warming, some of whom torch automobiles in the traditional manner of concerned idealists. As long as it’s not my car, I can just about live with these chaps, preferring on balance thuggish street politics to the spaced-out cultish stupor in which many of their confreres wander glassy-eyed from event to event. On the Internet, there is a telling clip of Christopher Monckton interacting with a young Norwegian from Greenpeace who has come along to protest the former’s “denialism.” Monckton is a viscount—i.e., a lord, like his fellow denialist, the former British chancellor Lord Lawson. Now that’s what I call peer review! (House of Lords joke.) Lord Monckton has the faintly parodic mien of many aristocrats, whereas the Greenpeace gal was a Nordic blond. If there were empty stools adjoining both parties at the Climate Conference bar, you’d head for hers before some carbon-credit travelling salesman swiped it. Big mistake. Monckton was the soul of affability, gently suggesting places where she could check out the data. She, by contrast, seemed barely sentient, clinging to rote emotionalism and impervious to reason, data, facts, inquiry.

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The emperor’s new carbon credits

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 218 Comments

For a small country, Denmark sure attracts a lot of attention. A Chicago Muslim, David Headley, was recently arrested at O’Hare International Airport en route to Copenhagen to kill the commissioning editor and artists of the Danish Muhammad cartoons. Alas, a far bigger group flying in to Copenhagen for a massive suicide bombing were permitted to board their flights: these were the jet-setting bigwigs of the climate-change circuit en route to Denmark to blow up the global economy and individual liberty in order to get back to paradise and enjoy their reward of 72 virgin-growth forests.

Both the radical Islam of David Headley and the Church of Settled Science of David Suzuki seem almost parodic responses to the hollowness of the modern multicultural West and the search for alternative, globalized identities. Indeed, it is hard to say which is wackier. Take Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Prince of Wales. One’s a millenarian apocalyptic loon, and the other’s president of Iran. On balance, widening the streets of Tehran for the imminent return of the Twelfth Imam seems marginally less deranged than insisting the planet is doomed in 96 months unless humanity abandons the evils of capitalism and “the age of convenience.” (This from a man who has never drawn his own curtains.)

Ah, well. When I compare the eco-cultists to the humourless fanatics of the jihad, I get barraged by stern emails denouncing me as a “denier.” Apostate! And Mr. Suzuki wants deniers jailed. Call the Inquisition! Continue…

Suddenly the world hates canada

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 231 Comments

A Greenpeace billboard; the issue for the summit, says Jim Prentice, is getting to a treaty the U.S. and China will sign

For decades, Canada has taken pride in punching above its weight on the international stage. Now it appears we’re the ones absorbing the body blows. As scientists, activists, diplomats, and political leaders gather in Copenhagen for the United Nations’ 15th convention on climate change, Dec. 7 to Dec. 18, the northern hemisphere’s “helpful fixer” is undergoing a radical—and unrelentingly negative—image makeover. Canada “is now to climate what Japan is to whaling,” George Monbiot, a columnist for the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, thundered late last month, citing the Harper government’s go-slow negotiating stance as “the major” obstacle to a new global agreement on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. “Until now I believed that the nation that has done the most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States,” wrote Monbiot, a green campaigner and bestselling author. “I was wrong. The real villain is Canada.”

And he is not alone in that opinion. At a UN climate conference in Bangkok in October, delegates from developing countries walked out of a negotiating session (en masse, say environmental groups who were at the meeting; just five or six countries, counters Michael Martin, our ambassador for climate change) to protest Canada’s suggestion that the Kyoto Protocol—the basis for the Copenhagen negotiations—be replaced with an entirely new anti-warming pact. In early November, at another UN meeting in Barcelona, Canada was named “Fossil of the Week” by the 450 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in attendance for its efforts to “block or stall” climate negotiations. (“If the price for having strong, capable, tough negotiators at the table is being singled out,” Environment Minister Jim Prentice said at the time, “then so be it. Bring it on.”)

During the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago at the end of November, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon pointedly called for Canada to pick up the pace of negotiations and adopt “ambitious” greenhouse gas reduction targets. And a coalition of scientists and NGOs asked the 53-nation body to suspend Canada’s membership—a punishment that in the past has been meted out to such rogue states as Zimbabwe and apartheid-era South Africa—for “threatening the lives of millions of people in developing countries” through its inaction on climate change.

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'I gotta change the story'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 14, 2009 at 12:32 PM - 29 Comments

Canada may be back. But we’re having a hard time getting a picture taken to prove it.

The shrimp and the damage done

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, December 11, 2009 at 11:10 AM - 88 Comments

As the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference gets under way in Copenhagen, the pages of what one might call the skeptical press are filled with scandalized accounts of the many ways the assembled delegates will be—get this—wasting carbon.

A report in the Sunday Telegraph reckons the total number of limousines commissioned for the event “has already broken the 1,200 barrier,” while as many as 140 private jets are said to be flying VIPs in and out of the city. An editorial in the National Post laments that delegates will be treating themselves “to jumbo Indian Ocean shrimp, Norwegian salmon and fruits and vegetables from South America, Africa and Southern Europe, all flown in daily to ensure maximum freshness.” The columnist George Will predicts the delegates’ collective carbon footprint, estimated at 41,000 tonnes of CO2, “will be the only impressive consequence” of the gathering.

You see a lot of this kind of thing. “That Al Gore, preaching restraint on the rest of us, but have you seen the size of his house?” It’s supposed to highlight the hypocrisy of global warming activists. But all it really does is tacitly endorse the doomsters’ most alarmist assumptions. The planet will not be consigned to a warming hell because Al Gore lives in a big house, or because the UN delegates eat too much Norwegian salmon. You can say it’s hypocritical, but only if you accept that stopping global warming requires us to abstain from imported foods, or large houses, or flying. It doesn’t.

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Thinking through Canada's climate change position

By John Geddes - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 12:32 PM - 112 Comments

Yesterday I posted remarks from Environment Minister Jim Prentice at a news conference, in which I thought he framed the Canadian government’s position on climate change with admirable clarity. Prentice made three key points:

1)    Canada’s population and economy have grown too much since 1990, the benchmark year for the Kyoto climate change treaty, to expect steep emissions reductions in this country from that starting point;
2)    Compared to the European countries that are leading the push for tough emissions-reduction targets this week in Copenhagen, Canada is bigger, colder, and faster-growing—and therefore EU aims don’t make sense here;
3)     Canada’s government is not willing to sign on to any target that could only be achieved with “inordinate economic costs.”

Having let Prentice’s explanation, which sounded reasonable enough, stand for a day or so, here are some observations about his argument.
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Jim Prentice sums up Canada's climate change postion

By John Geddes - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 4:43 PM - 62 Comments

Here in Ottawa this afternoon, in the Museum of Nature’s mammals gallery, Environment Minister Jim Prentice announced a $5-million study into the feasibility of creating a marine conservation area in Lancaster Sound, the eastern gateway to the Northwest Passage.

I called some Arctic wildlife researchers to ask what the sound is like. They described icy waters and rocky islands astoundingly rich in sea life—bowhead whales and walrus, nesting black-legged kittiwakes and (my new favourite) thick-billed murres that dive so deep, up to 200 metres, in search of fish that sea-bird experts haven’t figured out how they do it.

Given that this is the opening week of the Copenhagen climate change conference, and that global warming is the overarching environmental concern in the Arctic, I took the opportunity to ask Prentice about the linkage. Doesn’t Canada’s stewardship of Far North territory like Lancaster Sound stand embarrassingly at odds with our laggardly position in negotiations toward an international climate change treaty?

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It probably shouldn't be this easy to scale the Parliament Buildings

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 11:04 AM - 47 Comments

Greenpeace stages a protest. Twitter reaction from MPs Patrick Brown, Glenn Thibeault, Brent Rathgeber, Michelle Simson, Rod Bruinooge and Olivia Chow. The Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor tweets the scene.

The ‘science’ of global warming

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 341 Comments

“The gravest challenge that we face is climate change . . . Every one of our compatriots must feel concerned”—Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the French Republic;

“The climate crisis threatens our very survival”—Herman Van Rompuy, “president” of “Europe”;

“We cannot compromise with the catastrophe of unchecked climate change”—Gordon Brown, prime minister of the United Kingdom;

“Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children . . . this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”—Barack Obama, president of the United States.

The science is so settled it’s now perfectly routine for leaders of the developed world to go around sounding like apocalyptic madmen of the kind that used to wander the streets wearing sandwich boards and handing out homemade pamphlets. Governments that are incapable of—to pluck at random—enforcing their southern border, reducing waiting times for routine operations to below two years, or doing something about the nightly ritual of car-torching “youths,” are nevertheless taken seriously when they claim to be able to change the very heavens—if only they can tax and regulate us enough. As they will if they reach “consensus” at Copenhagen. And most probably even if they don’t.

How did we reach this point? Ah, well. Like the proverbial sausage factory, you never want to look too closely at how the science gets settled. The other day, a whole bunch of electronic documents most probably leaked by a disaffected insider from the prestigious Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia were posted online. Given that the CRU has conceded their authenticity, they provide a fascinating glimpse at the science underpinning the calm measured statements of Sarkozy, Brown, Obama, and wossname, the Belgian bloke—as well as of Kyoto, Copenhagen, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the “carbon credits” scam, the U.S. “cap and trade” monstrosity and every other major “climate change” boondoggle this century. They confirm what the soi-disant “skeptics” have long known:

1) The Settled Scientists have wholly corrupted the process of “peer review.”
Phil Jones, director of the CRU, writing to Michael Mann, creator (le mot juste) of the now discredited “hockey stick” graph, about two academics who disagree with him:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Professor Mann on an academic journal foolish enough to publish dissenting views:
“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.”
Professor Jones’s reply:
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”
And you’ll be glad to hear they did!

2) The Settled Scientists have refused to comply with Freedom of Information requests by (illegally) deleting relevant documents.
Phil Jones to Michael Mann on Feb. 3, 2005:
“The two MMs [McKitrick and McIntyre, the latter the dogged retired Ontarian who runs the Climate Audit website] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”
And, indeed, the CRU subsequently announced that they had “inadvertently deleted” the requested data.

3) The Settled Scientists have attempted to (in the words of one email) “hide the decline”—that’s to say, obscure the awkward fact that “global warming” stopped over a decade ago.
Phil Jones, July 5, 2005:
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

4) The Settled Scientists have tortured the data into compliance with political requirements.

From the computer code for one of the “Mann” models:

“Plots (1 at a time) yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions of growing season temperatures. Uses ‘corrected’ MXD—but shouldn’t usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.”

Yet perhaps the most important revelation is not the collusion, the bullying, the politicization and the evidence-planting, but the fact that, even if you wanted to do honest “climate research” at the Climatic Research Unit, the data and the models are now so diseased by the above that they’re all but useless. Let Ian “Harry” Harris, who works in “climate scenario development and data manipulation” at the CRU, sum it up. Mr. Harris was attempting to duplicate previous results—i.e., to duplicate all that science that’s supposedly settled, and the questioning of which consigns you to the Climate Branch of the Flat Earth Society. How hard should it be to confirm settled science? After much cyber-gnashing of teeth, Harry throws in the towel:

“ARGH. Just went back to check on synthetic production. Apparently—I have no memory of this at all—we’re not doing observed rain days! It’s all synthetic from 1990 onwards. So I’m going to need conditionals in the update program to handle that. And separate gridding before 1989. And what TF happens to station counts?

“OH F–K THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”

Thus spake the Settled Scientist: “OH F–K THIS.” And on the basis of “OH F–K THIS” the world’s enlightened progressives will assemble at Copenhagen for the single greatest advance in punitive liberalism ever perpetrated on the developed world.

Back in the summer, I wrote in a column south of the border:

“If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. There has been no global warming this century. None. Admittedly the 21st century is only one century out of the many centuries of planetary existence, but it happens to be the one you’re stuck living in.”

In response to that, the shrieking pansies of the eco-left had a fit. The general tenor of my mail was summed up by one correspondent: “How can you live with your lies, dumb­f–k?” George Soros’s stenographers at Media Matters confidently pronounced it a “false claim.” Well, take it up with Phil Jones. He agrees with me. The only difference is he won’t say so in public.

Which is a bit odd, don’t you think?

Phil Jones and Michael Mann are two of the most influential figures in the whole “climate change” racket. What these documents reveal is the greatest scientific scandal of our times—and a tragedy. It’s not just their graphs but their battle lines that are drawn all wrong. Science is never “settled,” and certainly not on the basis of predictive models. And any scientist who says it is is no longer a scientist. And the dismissal of “skeptics” throughout the Jones/Mann correspondence is most revealing: a real scientist is always a skeptic.

It may well be that Warmergate has come along too late. I won’t pretend to know the motivations of Jones, Mann and their colleagues, but judging from recent eco-advertising their work appears to have driven worshippers at the First Church of the Settled Scientist literally insane. A new commercial shows polar bears dropping from the skies onto city streets and crushing the cars below. To those of us who still quaintly recall 9/11, it evokes grotesquely those poor souls who chose to jump from the Twin Towers and die in one last gulp of air rather than perish in the fireball within. But who cares? Their plight is as nothing next to that of the polar bear. Why are they plummeting to their deaths from the heavens? As the ad explains, “An average European flight produces over 400 kg of greenhouse gases for every passenger. That’s the weight of an adult polar bear.”
Oooookay. It’s A Warmerful Life: every time they call your flight, a poley bear loses its wings.

Some in the political class go along because it’s too much effort to resist. A few are presumably true believers. But what a lot of the rest like about “global warming” is the “global” bit: you can’t do anything about it at town or county or even national level. No, sir, we need a “global” response. Fortunately, as Herman Van Rompuy, “president” of “Europe,” puts it: “2009 is the first year of global governance.”

That’s great news, isn’t it? I would urge the delegates at Copenhagen to listen to the experts and issue a comprehensive statement fully reflecting the rigorous scientific evidence. Here’s my draft:

“OH F–K THIS.”

On fourth thought

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 12:52 PM - 42 Comments

November 13. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s jet-setting fall tour won’t include a stop at a global climate change summit in Copenhagen next month.

November 14. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s aides say he will attend a key climate change summit in Copenhagen next month, but only if it appears that other world leaders plan to show up … Harper aides say if Obama goes to Cophenhagen, Harper likely will attend.

November 25. The White House said Wednesday that Obama will be in Copenhagen Dec. 9 for the opening of a major climate-change summit … The Canadian government lauded the “important step,” but the Prime Minister is still refusing to make a stop at the 11-day meeting… ”I have always been clear; if there is a meeting of all major leaders involving climate change, I will, of course, attend,” Harper said in the House of Commons.

November 26. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has done an about-face and will attend the Copenhagen climate-change meeting next month. A spokesman said Harper decided today to attend after the American and Chinese presidents announced that they will show up.

The Commons: Back to the future

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8:51 PM - 23 Comments

The Scene. Michael Ignatieff stood with a slight smile. His side cheered, government members jeered.

“Welcome back!” chirped one.

Then to the question, which was, lo and behold, something to do with the environment and the need for urgent action against potential ruin.

“Mr. Speaker, for four years, the government promised a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Mr. Ignatieff reported. “Today, the Environment Minister has once again postponed the announcement of any action until the end of 2010. We’re three weeks from Copenhagen. How can we protect the environment if the government takes no position?”

This was some riddle.

Up to answer was John Baird, an environment minister in a previous life.

“Mr. Speaker, this government is working constructively with our partners around the world to ensure that we tackle global warming and the challenge of climate change,” Mr. Baird declared. “What we will not do is make promises that we cannot keep.”

It is a testament to Mr. Baird’s abilities as a public performer that he did not here descend into giggles. Continue…

Bring it on

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:35 AM - 115 Comments

National Post, November 5. Mild-mannered, absolutely. But Environment Minister Jim Prentice wants the world to know he’ll be no boy scout when crucial climate change talks convene in Copenhagen a month from today … In the end, it’s almost a guarantee that no matter what happens, Canada will be vilified on the world stage as an energy superpower that abandoned the Kyoto Accord and isn’t shouldering its share of carbon reductions. ”Well, if the price of having strong, capable, tough negotiators at the table is being singled out and given ‘fossil of the year’ awards, then so be it. Bring it on,”  Mr. Prentice told me, doing his best impression of not being a boy scout.

National Post, November 12. As the most middle-of-the-road federal cabinet minister, Jim Prentice was never apprehensive about appearing on CBC. But the environment minister turned down an invitation to appear Friday morning on CBC radio’s flagship show The Current for a very good reason: a hostile host. That would be David Suzuki, the wildly successful environmental crusader and perennial alarm-ringer, who has seen the end of the world coming under a variety of climate change scenarios … What bothers Minister Prentice’s people is how they’re being asked to appear on a national current affairs show where the host would be an obvious antagonist.

Leave a message at the beep

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 4:02 PM - 30 Comments

David Sukuzi gives the Prime Minister a ring.

Frustration in the gallery

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 3:59 PM - 80 Comments

Glen Pearson considers Monday’s unpleasantness.

What transpired yesterday is something of an indicator as to what Parliament and the country itself has come to.  Protestors felt the need to invade a sacred place; parliamentarians looked uncomfortable and somewhat unmoved; and the media raced out into the halls to grab their pictures and stories of young people being muscled out of the Parliament buildings.

We’re better than this – all of us.  The bill itself was asking us to treat climate change seriously.  We haven’t and we’ll pay for it in world opinion at Copenhagen, not to mention global devastation.  The difficult things we will face in our future – environmental degradation, terrorism, starvation, poverty – demand outrage, attention and a sense of urgency.  Parliament can’t muster up that kind of anger, except to lob our partisan attacks.  So, these young people brought it into our own ballpark, trying to give us a wake-up call.

Biker gang warfare rocks Copenhagen

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 2 Comments

When the leaders of the Hells Angels and Bandidos declared a truce on Danish TV in 1997, the residents of Copenhagen breathed a sigh of relief. The handshake ended a Scandinavian biker war that had turned the city’s ordinarily placid streets into a battlefield, and left 12 people dead. But just over a decade later, rival gangs are once again settling grievances with bullets. Since last summer, an apparent turf war between the Hells Angels and immigrant gangs has been blamed for 60 shootings in the capital, a situation Justice Minister Brian Mikkelsen called “untenable and unacceptable.”

While Danish officials say the battle is over Copenhagen’s lucrative marijuana trade, others point to the split along ethnic lines as evidence of racial undertones. Most of the violence has played out on the streets of the Norrebro district, which is largely made up of Turkish and Pakistani immigrants. According to a recent exchange on the Hells Angels website, the group “doesn’t want to wipe out anyone, [but] we are tired of the mentality that some immigrants have.”

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