So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.
Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.
I'm starting to understand how progressive Americans have been feeling for the past eight years. Stephen Harper has been in office for less than half that time and has already turned our country into an international embarrassment.
All of which makes me wonder: what do you do when the country you love, the country that you have been a proud citizen of all your life, starts becoming... something other? How long before all this stops being just about the actions of one Prime Minister and his government, and starts being about the choices made by the country itself?
I feel a little sick.
Canada is the climate change bad guy. We have ignored our Kyoto commitments, have poor emissions targets for Copenhagen, and we are actively trying to disrupt climate meetings. But we still have a chance to change and lead.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/12/bad-canada.html
I saw him on The Agenda last night. I thought the interviewer was going to fall off his chair. It was the most negative, angriest, apalled comments I ever heard on Canadian Television. It's great to hear someone not from here go off like that. I couldn't have agreed with him more but meanwhile, like yourself, I find it totally embarassing to be a Canadian these days. It's like there is a disease has come over the couintry and it's not swine flu (or is it).
ReplyDeleteMonbiut is part of the debate tonight on The Agenda, if you didn't know.
Keep the sunnyside up yo!
I'm watching him right now on Strombo.
ReplyDeleteRelax Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteSome people believe that there is no real climate change. There were already some talks about temperature changes some 200 years ago and then nothing. Everything remained the way it was before. The reason United States and United Kingdom are blaming Canada is because their economy is not doing as well as ours and they are sinking in debt. I think it is just the way to extort some money from Canada and make themselves look not so bad compared to us in front of their electoring public.