More people these days are tuning out the green loud-hailers.
That might be because the well-thumbed script employed by those doing the broadcasting is getting dog-eared and factually frayed.
First to England, where storm clouds continue to mass around the Met Office, the U.K.’s national weather service, and its predictions in late 2010 of a milder-than-usual winter for Britain. Contrary to those forecasts, Old Man Winter laid a severe weather caning on the country that, among other things, brought Heathrow Airport to a standstill and is being blamed for a fourth-quarter drop in the country’s GDP. The Global Warming Policy Foundation, suspecting a weather office compromised by global warming bias, is now demanding the government launch an independent inquiry into the Met’s weather-reporting skills.
Meanwhile back in Canada, head- scratching continues over claims of environmental damage linked to a carbon capture and storage project in Saskatchewan. The Orwellian-sounding International Performance Assessment Centre for Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide has since sprung into action to investigate the claims.
It should save its energy.
Better that state mental-health officials investigate the heads of those behind the Prairie initiative.
Carbon capture and sequestration is doubtless one of the most misguided initiatives spawned thus far by the climate catastrophe brigade. Billions of taxpayer dollars have already been allocated to it in various regions of North America even though it raises energy costs, requires the development of deep subterranean storage facilities and releases more greenhouse gases to capture and store CO2.
Meanwhile in B.C., farmers struggling to make a living in the province’s northeast are being denied opportunities to use their land and machinery to turn a dollar from the area’s natural gas boom. Agricultural land reserve rules that aim to preserve fertile land where it’s under development pressure in urban centres like Metro Vancouver are preventing land owners in areas where it’s not from maximizing business opportunities. When they can’t make a living from farming their land, farmers need to find other ways to supplement their income. If they can’t, B.C. will have fewer farms and fewer hinterland revenue streams.
Eco-spin, meanwhile, is applying green lipstick to pigs in pokes all over the spectrum because most people don’t know what qualifies as a green business. Nor do the powers that be.
According to John Calvert, an SFU health sciences professor and co-author of Climate Change and Labour in the Energy Sector, “there’s no accepted definition [in Canada] of a green job.”
That makes it tough to forecast green job potential in the energy sector and elsewhere.
As to what a green job is, consider this Globe Foundation stab at a definition: “when an occupation produces an output or lowers the price of a product that offers positive environmental externalities, this may be considered in whole or in part a green job.”
All clear now?
If not, here’s what is clear: solutions to environmental problems need to be grounded in sustainable development realities and sound science, not harnessed to political bandwagons.
As Patrick Moore points out in his new book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout, the Making of a Sensible Environmentalist: “Greenpeace had no trouble with confrontation. … But we had difficulty co-operating and making compromises. We were great at telling people what they should stop doing, but almost useless at helping people figure out what they should be doing instead.”