November 20, 2006

My reaction to Canada making a fool of itself at the UN Climate Conference in Nairobi is neither public-spirited nor high-minded. I am instead profoundly personally embarrassed. I am simmering in a broth of shame.

I know what you're saying. This feeling is so boomer, so "me, me, me." Which coincidentally matches so-called Environment Minister Rona Ambrose's version of what Canada officially thinks of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Why does Canada have to keep its promises when, like, the Americans aren't going to clean their room ever? she asks an aghast international audience. No fair.

Since when does Canada behave like a teenager on the international stage? Canada's greatest resource is its international reputation. How much damage has this out-of-fashion paleo-con Tory government done? Canada looks like a hick with tooth stumps blackened by crystal meth.

This Canadian is deeply humiliated.

Oh grind my face in Guinea worms*. Finish me off. I want to lie down and expire, so sick am I of politicians lying to themselves and lying to us.

It makes it worse that Ambrose would choose to spin her fantasies about global warming on the continent that will be hit first and hardest by heat, drought, disease and famine.

The brilliant and wise comedian Sandra Shamas once said, "I don't feel lucky to be a Canadian. I feel relieved …" I am no longer even relieved. My country's government has made every Canadian look like a fool and until the next election, there is nothing we can do about it but head down to the furnace room and snip all the Canadian flag tags off our stacked luggage.

Despite the fact that Ambrose comes from Edmonton — my favourite Canadian city bar Montreal — she's not very Canadian. She claims to speak three languages, plus pidgin French, which is disgraceful. She, like her boss, Stephen Harper, is a faithful follower of the now lame-duck President George W. Bush. Bush is a bumpkin. So are his acolytes. Let me expound:

First, Ambrose told an international audience last week that it was the fault of the previous Liberal government that Canada will not meet its Kyoto targets. She actually thought the world keeps track of Canada's political landscape. Most of them will have nothing more than a vague impression of Canada as a nation that occasionally disagreed with its American neighbour, politely of course. The difference between Canadian Conservatives and Liberals eludes them. We all look the same: White and smug.

France's environment minister reacted by saying Canada's "retreat" was a shock for everyone at the conference. "And above all, it's a shock, I think, for the Canadians who I think are generally supportive of Kyoto."

Thank you, French minister Nelly Olin, for your public rebuke. She knows Canada better than Ambrose does. (And she comes from a country so cool it has just chosen the magnificent Ségolène Royal as Socialist leader. Liberté, égalité, sororité!)

Ambrose still does not realize her gaffe. The proof lies in her subsequent attack on Olin for meddling in Canada's domestic politics. Ambrose is the one who went domestic.

Second, Ambrose does not grasp the science behind fighting climate change. Canada is producing almost 35 per cent more greenhouse gases than it promised in the Kyoto Protocol. Ambrose said this earlier this year in a speech: "We would have to pull every truck and car off the street, shut down every train and ground every plane to reach the Kyoto target negotiated by the Liberals."

Seriously. The person in charge of cutting pollution in one of the planet's most prosperous and profligate nations claims that Canadians will have to curl in a ball and suck the leather laces of their Kodiak boots for nourishment rather than do their bit for humanity now. It will be cheaper to do it now, scientists and economists agree, than to endure it later. But in the crunch year, 2050, when we're hot and killing each other for water, Ambrose will be 81 and presumably living on a pile of rocks in Yellowknife. She won't care.

It's a calculation we all make in our heads when we hear that scary number 2050. I'll be dead by then, too. Which is why I care all the more. Climate change won't turn my life to a charred ruin. But it will cause great suffering for our children and perhaps wipe out their children.

Does Harper understand global warming? He's such a petulant man that he probably thinks it will affect the provinces differently. So as long as Ontario suffers more, life is good. I wish he'd take note of Alberta wasting its precious water on oilsands development. I wish he'd realized that the fierce storm from Hawaii that just hit British Columbia and has Westerners boiling their water was a product of global warming.

Harper needs to do some fast remedial science. Has he read the basic text, George Monbiot's How to Stop the Planet Burning?

1. Set an emissions target based on the best science.
2. Set a carbon cap and give each citizen a carbon cap.
3. Change building technologies.
4. Ban wasteful energy technology, for example, incandescent bulbs.
5. Redeploy money spent on nuclear missiles for energy generation and distribution (wind farms and hydrogen pipelines).
6. Promote public transport.
7. Provide leaseable electric car batteries at gas stations.

There's more. But Harper hasn't even reached No. 1.

We Canadians at home are refusing plastic bags in stores, worriedly asking each other whether the blue box takes aluminum pie plates, turning down the heat and taking public transit, all without government regulations. The environment minister's performance in Nairobi mocks our efforts at decent behaviour.

I drink my shame Kool-Aid, hands trembling. I shall vacation in Canada this year. Saves the embarrassment overseas.