or How Green is In, and the Mind War for Political Advantage is On ...

Ten days ago, Prime Minister Harper, announced the appointment of Ottawa MP John Baird as Canada’s new Minister of the Environment.

A few days later, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a plan to create the world's first global warming pollution standard for transportation fuels, ratcheting down fuel carbon content 10 percent by 2020. Suddenly green is in.

California’s new standard will have implications for the auto industry and could change the way gasoline is produced around the globe. It will also have implications for Canada because it will count all gases discharged during the full life cycle of the petroleum, a move that puts Alberta’s oil sands at a disadvantage because gasoline derived from oil sands require huge quantities of energy to extract and mine the “sticky” bitumen.

John Baird’s appointment was heralded as a great step forward as he was handed Rona Ambrose’s empty Clean Air Act.

That should mesh well with his clean-air record.

Last July, Ottawa City Council gave the go ahead for an $880 million light-rail transit system, designed to get cars off the road and greenhouse gases out of the air. At the time, Mr. Baird was President of Treasury Board in the Government of Canada. According to a published report by national columnist Lawrence Martin, Mr. Baird cancelled a $200 million federal contribution to the venture. In so doing, he killed the project and helped defeat Liberal Mayor Bob Chiarelli, setting up a victory for Larry O’Brian, a Conservative ally of Mr. Baird. Uhmm…

In a curious contrast to Schwarzenegger’s announcement, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced in Washington this week that the Bush Administration will open 5.6 million acres in Alaska's North Aleutian Basin for oil and gas development. Congress had barred drilling in Bristol Bay in 1989 after the huge Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill damaged Alaska's coast.

Eric J. Siy, executive director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council is quoted in the Washington Post as saying President Bush's decision to lift this moratorium is irresponsible. The Bay has the world's biggest wild sockeye salmon run, abundant red king crab, Pacific halibut, Bering Sea pollock and cod fisheries, he said. This is a place with hurricane-force winds and floating sea ice. An oil spill could be "a nightmare" in an area home to 1 million migrating waterfowl and such marine mammals as endangered right whales, he added.

Then we see President Bush on national television announcing his “new and improved” war in Iraq – 21,000 more troops, a renewed commitment to the “war on terror”, a reconstruction program, a promise to rout out Al Quada and a pledge to protect the territorial integrity of Iraq from Syria and Iran.

Mr. Bush’s speech was set against the backdrop of newly launched U.S. bombing strikes in Somalia and the contrasting popularization of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s growing climate change movement.

Most of the world recognizes the U.S. invasion of Iraq as misguided, illegal and without foundation. The American people voted against the war in November 2006. Bush’s escalation of the war ignores the advice of his generals and the Iraq Study group which had recommended diplomacy and de-escalation. 70% of the American people, according to a recent Ipso poll oppose the troop surge.

The irony is that Bush’s intensification of the Iraqi war sits in contrasted to his repudiation of the war on greenhouse gas emissions. Both have the potential to implode the planet but only one seems to matter to Mr. Bush.

Prime Minister Harper supported the invasion of Iraq. I’m not sure where he sits on the latest move. Like Bush, he also walked away from (Canada’s commitment to) the Kyoto Accord. The difference is that Mr. Harper can read the polls so now he’s scrambling to become a born-again greener.

There is little we can do about the American’s adventure in Iraq but we do have an opportunity to do something about greenhouse gas emissions.

British journalist George Monbiot, author of Heat: How to stop the Planet from Burning (Doubleday, 2006) has a theory.

"We wish our governments to pretend to act. That way, we get the moral satisfaction of saying what we know to be right, without the discomfort of doing it”.

Monbiot's assumptions differ only modestly from those of Al Gore. Both believe the window of opportunity in respect to reversing the causes of global warming is short, and closing. Both believe we must freeze greenhouse gas emissions and then reduce them by up to 60 percent below current levels by about 2030.

Monbiot argues for a global carbon emissions cap allocated on a per capita basis. Currently, global carbon emissions are about 7 billion tons, roughly one ton per person but the average North American generates, directly and indirectly, some 10 tons per capita. To save the planet, he says we must go way beyond the “freezing” of greenhouse gas emissions.

Monbiot concludes "There is no way of tackling this issue other than by reducing the number, length and speed of the journeys (cars and aircraft) we make."

I would argue we also have to green the way we generate energy (residential and industrial).

Is such an attack on greenhouse gas emissions politically possible when the fight is not about having more but doing with less?

Maybe the answer lies off Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic where an ancient ice-shelf, the size of 11,000 football fields broke off the Island in August 2005. Climate change is considered a factor and could ultimately be more threatening to the world than war (short of nuclear) in the Middle East.

If the great “Terminator” Arnold Swartzeneger can launch the fight against global warming, surely we as Canadians can take it forward.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com