Canadians go to the polls on October 14, 2008; just before the US federal election. Climate change was touted as a key election issue, but that was before the financial turmoil of the last couple of weeks.
According to Roger Gibbins writing in the Calgary Herald, Canadians’ resolve on global warming has cooled with the economy. Gibbins also commented that:
“The bad economic news has been unrelenting in recent weeks and there is no doubt public support for aggressive action on climate change has wilted in the face of this barrage. With ongoing woes across the border, plunging stock markets, escalating fuel costs and growing uncertainty about Canada’s economic prospects, voter support for aggressive climate change action is weakening. It is hard to concentrate on a complex climate change policy debate when financial institutions are collapsing and RRSPs are evaporating.
“The argument that aggressive climate change action is essential for Canada’s economic prosperity is not holding in tough economic times. For the most part, Canadians are proving to be fair-weather climate change supporters.”
In Australia the Rudd Labor government is planning for the introduction of an emissions trading scheme in 2010. The idea is to go with emissions trading rather than for example, a carbon tax, as the market is claimed to be the best place to sort out what the price of carbon should ultimately be, etcetera.
But I can’t see how the whole scheme is anything more than a crock, as the carbon market is entirely a creation of government regulation and therefore totally artificial.
Sure there will be those who make money as middle men, brokers for schemes where industry pays for permits to emit carbon dioxide at so much a tonne, but it is artificial, perhaps as risky as a sub-prime mortgage?
Indeed, according to blogger and Professor Emeritus, Philip Stott:
“With a world likely to cool during the next decade, with a world economy set in austere mode, and with the new politics of China, India, Brazil, and the rest, Big Global Warming’s boom days are surely coming to an end.
“Global warming’ is sub-prime science, sub-prime economics, and sub-prime politics, and it could well go down with the sub-prime mortgage.”
Here’s hoping that all this happens, before too much more damage is done.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.