Global Warming: The Real Agenda

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Global Warming: The Real Agenda

Editorial by Terrence Corcoran
Copyright 1998 Financial Post (Canada)
December 26, 1998

What is the most important problem facing Canada? When the annual
Maclean's/CBC year-end poll asked that question, there was at least
one clear answer: Not the environment; in fact, anything but the
environment. Ranked by percentage of people who identified one subject
or another, the top worry among

Canadians is unemployment (15%), followed by government spending, the
economy, health care, national unity, taxes, poverty, education and
crime. At the bottom of the list, garnering only 2% support, is the
environment.

The possibility that 98% of Canadians are not in a state of high
anxiety over global warming, freaky weather, ozone depletion,
pollution and scores of other Green scares must be a teeth-gritting
irritation to environmentalists. They have, after all, spent decades
fertilizing the idea that we are on the brink of environmental
disaster. Ottawa and the provinces have spent billions on the
campaign, which includes turning the weather into a propaganda tool
and the school system into an indoctrination camp that begins in
kindergarten.

The poll is a testament to the good sense of Canadians. Despite
relentless scare-mongering by bureaucrats and activists, Canadians
remain unwaveringly fixed on a national economic agenda of growth and
prosperity rather than on fantastic claims of apocalypse. When David
Suzuki says global warming 'is the most urgent slow-motion catastrophe
facing humankind,' nobody is paying much attention.

Except our politicians. Backed by an army of bureaucrats and
researchers, governments are systematically preparing to shut down the
engines of economic progress in the name of environmentalism. In
Canada, the heart of the stop-growth campaign is Environment Canada,
where key bureaucrats dedicated to imposing an environmental agenda on
the country have seized control. The focus of their effort is global
warming and climate change, which they intend to use as a lever to
impose what can only be described as a new economic order.

The politician nominally in charge of all this is Environment Minister
Christine Stewart. Whether Ms. Stewart fully understands what's going
on around her is unknown, but during a recent visit with the editorial
board of the Calgary Herald she certainly demonstrated her conversion
to the religion of global warming.

Ms. Stewart said that, 'as minister of the environment, I am very
worried about global warming,' which for a politician isn't saying
much. Politicians are habitually 'very worried' about one thing or
another. The trouble starts when they use their power to fix problems
they're worried about, even if the problems don't exist. Ms. Stewart
said she's prepared to do exactly that. 'No matter if the science is
all phony,' she said, 'there are collateral environmental benefits.'

Environment Canada, therefore, is prepared to act on global warming
even if there's no such thing as global warming. On the strength of
phony science, the federal government would still be willing to impose
new taxes on energy consumption, cut economic growth, reduce our
standard of living, and create bookshelves filled with new regulation
governing most facets of the lives of Canadians.

In another statement quoted by the Herald, Ms. Stewart gave another
reason for adopting the religion of global warming. 'Climate change
[provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in
the world.' Here she gets closer to the core motivation of some of the
leading global warming activists. Where socialism's attempt at a
global redistribution of wealth ended in economic catastrophe, global
warming is being wheeled in as the next new economic crusade.

Consolidating Ms. Stewart's statements, we reach some horrific
conclusions. Whether global warming actually exists is irrelevant. It
is, in the hands of government and environmental activists, a
convenient front for the introduction of programs and economic
policies that Canadians - and most citizens of the world - would not
otherwise accept.

Ms. Stewart, perhaps unintentionally, has identified the two key
foundations of the global warming movement. One is based in
environmentalism, which essentially claims that human beings are a
problem in nature. The other foundation is the old business of
economic redistribution. Both these movements are linked in the
international climate change treaty Canada signed in Kyoto.
Environment Canada has already given up trying to examine the science.
It never really tried. Instead, it spends hundreds of millions of
dollars churning out propaganda on the hypothetical effects of global
warming. Its latest reports include hundreds of studies warning of
everything from spreading insect-borne disease to increasing forest
fires.

The Maclean's poll shows Canadians aren't going along with the
government or the claims of environmentalists. If they knew what Ms.
Stewart has in store for jobs and living standards, and why, they
might take a greater interest.

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