What's wrong with our Conservatives?

If this country were any example, one might conclude that Conservatives cannot, or will not, grasp the severity of the global warming threat. In Alberta, for example, the UCP has trashed what was a decent climate change program and set a course for all out expansion of the tar sands. At the same time, it has budgeted 30 million taxpayer dollars for a "war room" to attack critics of the oil industry. The new Conservative government in Ontario similarly gutted an effective climate change program, including cancelling a cap and trade agreement. The federal Conservatives have laid out a plan that could have been created by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (and perhaps was) that is hopelessly ineffectual.

Indeed, the major focus of Canada's Conservative parties is not on ways to deal with the crisis, but rather on attacking one of the best instruments we have. They oppose carbon taxing, even to the point of fighting it in court, despite economists across the philosophical spectrum, including the two winners of this year's Nobel prize, strongly supporting its efficacy. This is perverse.

But to tarnish all conservatives with this brush would be most unfair. Britain's Conservatives, for instance, seem to grasp the urgency. Or at least some of them do. Prime Minister Theresa May has stated, “We are the last generation of leaders with the power to limit global warming.” You can't make it any clearer than that. She has declared a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and encourages other countries to be more ambitious. She has even promised that Britain's overseas aid budget will be spent in a way that contributes to transitioning to a low-carbon global economy. Of course all this could be undone if her successor is a denier and that is quite possible, but we must be positive.

May says that she grasped the seriousness of the crisis while walking in the Swiss mountains. "There’s a particular place we go to where over the last decade you can see the glacier retreating quickly—and this has brought home to me the importance of climate change," she said. Perhaps we need to send Kenney, Ford and Scheer for a hike in the Rockies.