Harper and Baird, All Bluster on the Enviornment.

Climate-change reputation in tatters? Try blustering - The Globe and Mail

I have to wonder why it is that most people, at least most reasonable people (American Right Wing Christian Family Values Lobby groups don't count) around the world have figured out that John Baird and Stephen Harper are full of shit, yet here at home, a good 30% (or 39% if you believe the Conservative polls) still feel that  Harper and the Harpies are the greatest thing since enriched white bread, sliced at that.

If John Baird blusters on about forests, and no one gives a shit, does he really make any noise at all? Apparently so at home in Canada here.

It is indeed a conundrum. But I guess the rest of the world isn't exposed  to the daily doses of vitriolic, hyper-partisan "Truth Bending" that we here in the frigid North are exposed to on a daily basis. 

You see, Harper and his cadre of pretty-boy office clerks at the PMO has learned that if you shout the same lie often enough, it becomes a believable truth. Like with the environment for example. 

Harper and his pet Monkey Baird have been trumpeting all week, the creation of an aquatic nature reserve at Lancaster Sound north of Baffin Island in the Arctic. By doing so, coincidentally just prior to the UN Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, a believable illusion is created that portrays the New-Cons as champions of the environment and protectors of the fragile Arctic and it's indigenous people. 

While it is a fact that this reserve has been created, they don't mention that 14,000 km of the Horn Plateau in the NWT has also been declared open season for mining exploration thus sending the rather unequivocal message that the Harper-Feds don't give a flying fig about endangered species, lush Boreal forests, delicate Tundra or Indigenous people. And in this particular case, Chuck Strahl, Harper's hand puppet for Northern Development had promised the Territory and the local First Nations groups faithfully, that this land would continue to be protected. A lie that was repeated so often, that these groups concerned with protection of the Arctic, naively wrapped up in a false sense of security,  never  saw the truck that hit them.

And of course, Baird and Harper frequently speak of their "Aggressive Made in Canada" strategy for combating climate change. And we know that there is no strategy, just a lot of smoke and mirrors. That in fact, the Reform/Conservatives single biggest priority is protecting the Alberta Oil Sands at all cost. The same Oil Sands that are the single worst polluter in the country. The same Oil Sands that local First Nations groups have said are producing higher than average rates of cancer among their people, and The Harper Government has gone to great lengths to disprove. The same Oil Sands that Former Harper staffer Ezra Levant wrote about in his best selling book "Ethical Oil" which perpetuates the myth that Alberta Oil does no irreversible harm to the environment.

And the Oil Sands of course are the primary reason why Canadian diplomats have been meeting with big American Petro-Lobby groups in an effort to  influence American policy makers regarding their environmental objectives and to flog Alberta Oil over oil from say, Venezuela or Saudi Arabia.

And it is on the behalf of Alberta Oil, that Harper and Baird have gone to such great lengths to scuttle attempts by the UN to establish effective targets for reducing green house gasses. 

So despite what you've heard to the contrary fellow Canadians, Harper didn't go to Ottawa to create a kinder, gentler nation or to free us from the Liberal attitude of entitlement. He went there for one reason and one reason only. Alberta Oil. He doesn't care about you, he doesn't care about me, and he most certainly doesn't care about democracy. We are all expendable collateral damage in his war to keep the oil flowing out of Alberta. 

So with this in mind, look for Oil Tankers to be hauling up to the B.C coast in the near future, despite recent legislation in the House of Commons to ban the threat of Tankers and subsequent oils spills off B.C's coast. Harper has the majority in the Senate and he has no remorse what so ever in overturning the elected majority in the lower house to keep the oil flowing. And Enbridge of course, also wouldn't be spending Millions of dollars to construct a pipe-line from Alberta to the B.C. coast for nothing. There has to be a way to move the oil once it gets there.

And I think the scariest and most telling comment of all came recently from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty when he stated that he sees a future where Canada will be an "Energy Super Power". And odds are boys and squirrels, he's not talking about anything remotely close to environmental friendly energy.