From the Hill Times (subscription required):
I am a gay environmentalist, which if popular opinion is to be believed, puts me high on Prime Minister Stephen Harper's hit list.
Cute start, and with it, James Heath immediately takes to task those who insist the Conservatives are evil, as the holders of "popular opinion" insist they are:
And to be sure, the Defence of Religion Act is dangerous, just as it was dangerous when former justice minister Irwin Cotler asked that Prairie marriage commissioners be allowed to refuse to perform ceremonies they didn't like. Funny, there wasn't a hue and cry about that then.
But let's get to environmental issues, the core of the essay:
In 12 years of so-called progressive government, our emissions are rising twice as fast as the Texas oil man in the White House. Mr. Harper is not to blame. He may have some appalling beliefs, but he did not leave Canada as the world's third-worst contributor to the climate crisis, after the U.S. and Australia. That honour fell to the Liberals, making now a good time to probe the analysts of environmental policy.
His probe of the analysts is quite telling, and shows a level of hypocrisy that is quite astounding:
Take the Sierra Club, for example. For years, Elizabeth May and John Bennett— Sierra's director of energy policy—urged that Canada follow California's lead and adopt mandatory fuel efficiency for vehicles. As they should. Here's what the Sierra Club said after the Tories floated a trial balloon on bringing those mandatory standards in: "Canada needs to reduce its carbon pollution by 300 million tonnes. Regulating vehicle emissions would achieve 5 to 7 million tonnes in reductions. What we need is more action and less talk by politicians." (Sept. 22, 2006)
And here's what they had to say after the Liberal government ducked out on mandatory standards in favour of voluntary—as in, no—regulation instead: "The terms of the agreement, although voluntary, are a bit more aggressive but consistent with the direction of the California Clean Car Bill… This could be a new North American standard and result in hundreds of megatonnes of reductions." (April 5, 2005)
With Harper in office, however, the asks became more demanding. And after congratulating the Liberals' voluntary plan, Sierra sent out this release: "Regulate auto emissions to fix the climate change plan." (Aug. 24, 2006) Funny, that, because the title of the release from April was "Sierra Club of Canada congratulates federal government on new car deal." The David Suzuki Foundation's release's title was "Voluntary auto emissions deal inadequate, say environmental groups."
Either mandatory standards are good or not: They don't become good or bad when the government changes.
But this is where Heath is wrong. He is right inasmuch as the objective reality is concerned. If the law is a good one, if it is effective, if it reaches desirable goals, it should not matter what government put it in place. But liberals don't live in an objective reality. Conservatives do. The nature of conservatism is to conserve in favour of arbitrary change, because we know what is, we can measure it, and we understand the implications of change in terms of what will be lost, rather that hoping what might be gained. With change comes unintended consequences, especially when change is driven by a process based more on wishful thinking than real knowledge.
Liberals believe in a world as it should be (whatever that particular liberal thinks that is) and believes in compelling people to move in that direction. Conservatives believe that is more important to let people make their own decisions based on their own needs, and the world that results is likely to be the best compromise possible to reconcile those competing needs.
Liberals hate that approach, since it does not guarantee that the world will suit their desires. And so they hate conservatives since the conservative approach does not guarantee progess to meeting those desires.
In that hatred comes this inability to give conservatives credit when they recognize a need for a change (because we do drive change too, just not as capriciously as liberals) and then come up with an effective means of achieving that change. Remember, since conservatives are rooted in reality, their plans are almost always more effective, because they recognize the limitations of what is possible in a given time frame. This is why most engineers are conservatives (in outlook, if not always in political affiliation).
So the Conservatives come up with a plan, and the liberal peanut gallery hates it. Not because it won't work. The Liberal plan didn't work. The Conservative plan is more likely to work (it can't work any worse than the Liberal plan), but those Conservatives aren't progressive. So the good plan must be bad.
James Heath recognizes this to be ridiculous:
Punishment, it seems, is due only if Tories are in power. Under Liberals, the Sierra Club demanded regulation, didn't get it, but congratulated the government for not giving it to them. Then with Harper in office, demanded he scrap the deal they celebrated, and when he brought in something better…raised the bar, and urged them to attack the coal and oil industries instead.
Who would listen seriously to the Sierra Club, or Greenpeace, or the Suzuki Foundation? Certainly no conservative would, knowing that the discussion will inevitably return to just how awful conservatives are.
Give credit to Stephen Harper and his government for trying anyway. There is no political gain for them. They could authorize the clearcutting of forests in every national park, and the left would hate them no less than they do now. But despite that, despite the fact that all this environmental effort is not likely to win them any votes, the Conservatives try anyway. Why? Because they see it as their responsibility, over and above whether the effort will help them stay in power. Maybe that's why their efforts are more effective:
But even after doing demonstrably better on a key issue—and if it's not key, one has to ask why Sierra spent so much time working on it—the Tories are rewarded by being crapped on by leading green groups. By my count, Tories have regulated toxics more effectively than their Liberal predecessors, and appear set to do better on fuel efficiency, too. Indeed it is troublesome that Mr. Harper won't meet our Kyoto targets, but also fair to point out his predecessors promised a 20 per cent cut to emissions by 2005, but then dawdled in against acting on what they now bleat is the crisis of our time.
Heath encourages the naysayers to open their eyes and start seeing the reality. It won't happen. Their kind only see the world as it should be (each with own vision of paradise, of course). For those like James Heath who are seeing the world as it is (some for the first time, perhaps), including seeing the true behaviour of these partisans for whom truth is a fluid entity that changes depending on who speaks it, they might have a useful role to play. As long as conservatives stay true to the truth, James Heath and his sort can be of immense help. Not motivated by political loyalty, they can provide what would be perceived as honest evaluations of ideas and their outcomes.
Am I hinting that James Heath could be invited to provide more formal input on Conservative Party environmental progress? Why not? He seems eager to achieve results, and not to score cheap political points, unlike his friends at the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the Suzuki Foundation.
Unlike liberals, conservatives don't generally judge the value of an idea based on whose idea it was. If James Heath makes sense, then it doesn't matter that he's a gay environmentalist. I can pretty much assure him that Stephen Harper does not have a hit list. Honest conservatives don't work that way.
