Reducing greenhouse gases will be Canada’s economic and environmental salvation.
That’s why Nova Scotia deserves the chance it has been given to become a leading exponent of green, clean energy.
That opportunity assumed a new dimension last week when the province and Korean corporate giant Daewoo Steamship and Marine Engineering Ltd. agreed to build wind turbines in Trenton.
The debate is over. We need to bring carbon emissions back from the brink. We need to do it for economic, social, health and security reasons. It is not only about our ecology.
Just don’t expect federal MP Maxime Bernier to agree.
The former cabinet minister appears to be appealing to a very right wing constituency as he positions himself for a run at the federal Conservative leadership. It’s making Prime Minister Stephen Harper look centrist, if that’s possible.
In a letter to a Quebec newspaper, Bernier contented it would be irresponsible for Canada to spend billions to reduce pollution based on what he’s convinced is suspect science regarding climate change.
Consider the source.
Bernier’s track record while he was a cabinet minister is too cartoonish for him to be taken seriously. It included a security breach and questions about his competency as Foreign Affairs Minister.
Now let’s fast track to Sarah Palin, who could be running for U.S. president on a Republican ticket within two years.
If the Republicans really wanted to shake things up, they’d champion Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger. He could be the first Progressive Republican since Theodore Roosevelt. Alas, while people can be black or female to run for president, they must be born in the U.S.
But here’s Palin, taking the country’s conservative right by storm while she changes her story to suit her audience. That includes a claim her family actually travelled from the U.S. to Canada to access the very public health care system she excoriates.
It has been a bitter, protracted process for Barack Obama to win one of the major battles of his presidency in an effort to provide health care to the more than 40 million Americans who have none.
Obama has been as calm as he has been relentless. How he has stayed above the fray, at least publicly, tells us what a considerable person he is, because it has been nasty.
Conservative politicians and pundits have poisoned the debate with vigour. And it is hurtful to watch. Only in America, one concludes, can you find people so willing to dismiss the 20 per cent of their people who can’t access health care in their country at any price – and feel good about it.
Politics being what it is, voters tend to elect people who reflect their values, so we get the governments we deserve.
It challenges all voters to examine those values through a prism that is wise, just and merciful – all at the same time.
Steve Goodwin