Elizabeth May Speech

As you can guess from the title I saw Elizabeth May speak- she is the brand new leader of the Green Party. I was pretty impressed with her speech. Keep in mind I'm not the greenest guy as I'm all about using the land because I learnt to love the outdoors from ranchers and loggers. And in high school half my friends were NDP like me and the other half were Conservative and we would all rag on the one green guy (that’s you tbooth). But her speech was full of substance (unlike any of the other party leaders) and made me look at climate change in a completely different way.

I know the Green Party tries to be like we are more than the environment but May's entire speech was about the environment with slight detours into the Environment Ministry's bureaucracy and a bit about nuclear proliferation. She was focusing mostly on her progress in getting heard in the House of Commons (she scored a tight diplomatic seat) and a lot about Rona Ambrose's recent environment announcement. She thinks Rona is the worst environment minister mainly because she is smart so she’s effective at misleading people. On several areas she completely lied how credits were used in Kyoto she is being called back to the committee to account for them. I liked it how Rona talks smack about those "Liberal targets" but no this is an international binding treaty not some sort inept evil Liberal ploy to eat your babies and give money to French people.

A couple things about climate change stuck with me. One was that Conservatives try to separate Smog from Greenhouse gases which makes no sense- why not hit two birds with one stones. Perhaps more importantly Canada doesn't need a Clean Air Act (Harper announced he will introduce one in after a year of consultation) because we already have the tools to crack down harder on smog thru Mulroney era legislation. She also made the important observation that Kyoto is just the first baby step. And how we can't make 6% of 1990 levels even with loopholes while Europe and Japan can make 8% and hell England is close to 20%. California is saying screw you Bush and is aiming for 80% by 2030. She gave us a great statistic- all the people in California had to switch to energy efficient fridges recently- this saved more power than that which is produced by every American nuclear reactor put together. Even more striking was when she described climate change not as a dial getting progressively worst but rather as a switch. She talked about the possibility of in twenty years the Gulf stream shutting down or Greenland's ice sheets melting which would rise sea level by 7 meters because we are just making the world hotter but rather changing the chemistry of the atmosphere. Both of these events would be devastating and fundamentally alter the way we live (imagine every costal city on Earth under water or no more food in Europe cause its too cold).

She also has good points about getting rid of the new (10 years old) corporate culture in civil service and restore competency to the bureaucracy especially in science related areas. She had a good point about the NDP and Bloc bashing only the Liberals last elections- corruption is a big deal she said but it doesn't affect my child's future like climate change.

This was all really interesting and impressive- I went from being very skeptical about the Green Party to thinking seriously about joining the party. One thing almost ruined it for me. You see whenever I hear a politician (doesn’t matter what party) speak I'm like that’s bullshit. This didn't happen with May until her last paragraph when she mentioned North Korea and Nuclear Proliferation. She goes on to say that Canada is part of the problem because we gave nuke reactors to Pakistan and they gave them to North Korea.

What a huge piece of bullshit- if that was true it would be on the cover of every paper in this country. Ok we gave CANDU reactors to India and they promised they wouldn't use the weapons grade plutonium byproduct for nuclear weapons- they were lying. Now they certainly didn’t give it to Pakistan or North Korea. And before tonight I've never heard any person claim Pakistan gave nuke related stuff to North Korea. This is how North Korea works out:

1994: Cut a deal with Clinton so IAEA inspectors come into their nuke plant where the plutonium fuel rods are pulled out.

2001: White House claims without proof that North Korea has been enriching uranium.

Jan. 10 2003: Amid massive Iraq build up NK serves notice that they are pulling out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

March 17 2003: Eve of the highly illegal butchering of Iraq, NK kicks out IAEA and sticks in plutonium fuel rods.

2004: They invite Siegfried Hecker the former director of Los Alamos to check out their nuclear program. They proudly show him enough plutonium to make over 10 bombs. When he asks to see their alleged uranium enrichment program they tell him they have no reactor for it, no materials, no funds, no scientists and therefore no program.

2006: NKs drop the Bomb and somehow the world is surprise. Hell I wasn’t because I knew in 2003 that Kim has taken advantage of Bush being in Iraq cause he told us. I knew he had weapons grade material because he told us and showed us.

So that kind of pissed me off but I can let that go cause I know she doesn't have a staff to check things out and I cannot use that one misconception to ignore her very very valid and pertinent message on Climate Change. I got to meet her as well- I just managed to mention that I ran against her party as a Marijuana Party Candidate but that her party's Marijuana policy was the best of the four major parties. (I don’t like how in their scheme marijuana remains a federal matter and how it would be taxed- hell it should be completely a health issue instead of justice so it would be under provincial control and people should just be able to grow it on their own without having to go to some bullshit government store.) She seems very genuinely happy to meet me and I thanked her for the great speech. She was very accessible had a lot of integrity although personally if she gets any seats she will start getting corrupted and compromise her principles. Happened to the CCF/NDP and the Green parties of Europe.

But if you can go see her then please by all means go ahead- you will not think the same about the environment again.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention when May was talking about how biggest problem with meeting Kyoto targets was the Alberta Tar sands. A guy in the front was like what would you do about the Tar sands and she bravely tackled the question head on and said she agreed with Peter Lougheed (Former P.C. Alberta Premier) and the Fort McMurray city council that there should be a moratorium on Tar sands development because Alberta is not necessarily benefiting from it- certainly not as much as it can be. There is the obvious example of Fort McMurray which is a living testament to every wrong with the Alberta boom- no housing, high crime, pollution and rampant environmental destruction. Then there is the simple fact of the sweet heart deal for the oil companies. Up till very recently Alberta had the smallest royalties in the entire world- a mere 1%. The Federal Government also gives the companies a 1.4 billion dollar tax break. That’s right every Canadian subsidizes the Alberta Tar sands and Albertans still manage to be against equalization. Also these oil companies don’t pay for water rights. The Athabaska is already at record lows and Alberta is going to feel a water shortage in 30 years. And of course there is the obvious fact that oil development is not particularly good for the environment especially when the Alberta Tar Sands pollute not only Alberta but also Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Since I always unreservedly thought that the Tar sands were the best thing since sliced bread these revelations certainly got me thinking differently about this.