Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice appeared on CBC Radio’s “The Current” with guest host Susan Ormiston this morning. He kept repeating the now standard Conservative mantra that Canada can’t do anything until the U.S. takes definitive action on capping its emissions and adopting green technology. This brings into question our nation’s sovereignty. Although Canada has always had the U.S. elephant as our neighbour, it hasn’t deterred us from taking independent stances in the past. Mr. Prentice and Mr Harper just need to look into the Progressive Conservative Party’s history – whether it is former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s leadership role in curbing acid rain emissions or former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s refusal of nuclear arms for Canada. If either of these Conservative leaders had taken the present Conservative Prime Minister’s stance of letting the Americans take the lead, our country would be a very different place.
To hear the whole interview, click here and go to Part 1 of today’s program.
In other coverage leading up to Copenhagen, Robert J. Kennedy Jr. wrote an interesting commentary in the Huffington Post yesterday on “The New Arms Race”. In the article, Mr. Kennedy asserts that the Chinese are now spending as much on green energy technologies as on the military. 38 % of the recent Chinese stimulus package went to renewable energy, in comparison with just 12% of the U.S. stimulus package. (Here in Canada, the Conservative government designated a whopping 8 % of the stimulus package to renewables in last January’s budget).
Also in yesterday’s Huffington Post, James Hoggan asserts that the climate denial industry should foot the bill for delayed action on addressing climate change (see my post yesterday on the CBC coverage of this issue). The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently announced that every year of delayed action to address climate change will add $500 Billion to the price tag of saving the planet.