Partisan politics are so hard to comprehend sometimes. The uproar over the carbon tax, for example, mystifies me. I bet none of the vocal types against the tax returned their several carbon tax credit cheques to Ottawa.
Two different friends of mine got stuck coming home to the Valley on Easter Monday. One described driving home from Fredericton on the Trans Canada Highway, the only main road to Nova Scotia.
“At Aulac, N.B., the RCMP had closed the road because a bunch of stupid, moronic, idiots are protesting the three cents a litre carbon tax.”
She continued, “We’ve had bigger jumps on a normal day. So, these fools are allowed to close a major highway to protest something that they have been lied to about by the opposition. Look up the facts.”
These folks heading to Kings County got stalled in the traffic or had to make a one-hour detour around the protest via Amherst. Steam, no doubt, was coming out their car windows.
Meanwhile, Conservative Pierre Poilievre was busy fomenting opposition to the scheduled increase that added 3.3 cents to the carbon price on a litre of gasoline.
Poilievre circulated a letter, according to the CBC, suggesting that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convene an emergency meeting with the premiers to discuss the increase.
The Official Opposition leader had spent about a month criss-crossing the country to host ‘axe the tax’ rallies.
Poilievre has vowed to scrap the tax should he become prime minister after the next election.
On the environmental front, however, it’s going to be a lot harder to claim climate change isn’t happening given there’s a new satellite that orbits the earth 15 times a day looking for methane emissions.
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The MethaneSAT was launched last month by a SpaceX rocket and uses infrared sensors to measure methane leak emitted by the world’s oil and gas production centres.
The invisible, yet significantly potent gas, is responsible for one-third of global heating. Since it is colourless and odourless, MethaneSat and about a dozen other kindred satellites, launched earlier, are making it easier to trace this climate menace.
Pollution information has to go back to scientists, policymakers, industry and the public. Surely this kind of data ought to be compelling.
Going after pollution verified from the sky will slow global warming, but I bet our opposition leader would find an excuse to ignore this brand of human-caused emissions.
Methane plumes are, after all, the second biggest environmental problem for the world after carbon.
Across the pond, the European court of human rights ruled recently that weak government climate policies actually violate fundamental human rights. The Swiss government had violated the human rights of its citizens, Reuters noted, by failing to do enough to combat climate change.
The decision will likely set a precedent for future climate lawsuits, with the vote in favour of the more than 2,000 Swiss women who brought the case. Perhaps more communities will be inspired to bring climate cases against various governments who continue to fill the atmosphere with gases that make weather more extreme.
Corina Heri, a law researcher at the University of Zürich, called the case a huge success. The court, which calls itself ‘the conscience of Europe,’ set out a route for organizations to bring further cases. The Swiss verdict likely opens up all 46 members of the Council of Europe to similar cases in national courts that they are likely to lose.
The other notable environment news of late is the fact that the world’s biggest economies are investing billions into fossil fuel production in poor nations. The G20 countries have spent $142 billion in the last three years to expand operations, despite a G7 pledge to stop doing so. According to a report in The Guardian, Canadian firms have plowed $11 billion last year into gas finds in impoverished countries.
Meanwhile, Dutch police detained Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg twice recently at a demonstration in the Netherlands. The 21-year-old was among a group of protesters who tried to block a major highway into The Hague.
After being released, Thunberg joined a small group of marchers demonstrating against Dutch subsidies and tax breaks given to firms linked to fossil fuel industries.
“'We are here because we are facing an existential crisis,” Thunberg stated. “We are in a planetary emergency, and we are not going to stand by and let people lose their lives and livelihood and be forced to become refugees when we can do something.”
Extinction Rebellion activists have blocked the highway that runs past the site of the Dutch parliament more than 30 times to protest the subsidies. That seems to be far better protesting than the kind set up on the New Brunswick border.
Wendy Elliott is a former reporter for the Kentville Advertiser and the Hants Journal. She lives in Wolfville.
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