Bribe Me With a Tree

With Canada sleepwalking through the election that nobody wanted except the one who called it, perhaps the last thing you want to hear about is a tree. But it’s a very important tree.

You see, not only Canada, but the whole world is in the early stages of ecological and climate disaster, and it ain’t pretty. Trees, one of our best bets for carbon sequestration, are burning up faster than they're being planted.

In the midst?of deciding who will govern us for the next four or five years, not a peep about climate change. Well, except for the Greens, and they self-immolated before the election was called.

Not only is this an unneeded election, it's one with no apparent issues. The party leaders?tiptoe cautiously around the tulips, hoping to find something which resonates with no risk of annoying anyone.?Each triangulates so as to?be less unattractive than the others, but the issue which should be front and centre gets no traction.

None has the courage to be bold about climate change, the central issue impacting our lives, our budgets, our borders, our external relationships, and our children. “We intend to bring bold and courageous leadership to the environmental file” is about as specific as it gets, the kind of bromide you apply to naming the next national park.

It’s twenty years too late to promise to “bring bold and courageous leadership to the environmental file”. Although?British Columbia is burning, crops on the Prairies are dying in the fields, and the sea encroaches on Sackville, New Brunswick, climate change is a peripheral issue in this campaign. Do we have to wait until Muskoka cottage country?burns and Nova Scotia becomes an island before we turn our minds to some contingency plans for the environment?

You want my vote? You want to break me out of Tweedledee and Tweedledum disinterest? Then bribe me with promises to:

1. Appoint a Superminister of Climate Change, equivalent to Finance, Defence, or External Affairs, and give the post to your best candidate. Buy them a pair of steel-toed boots, and let them raid all the other departments for their best and brightest, as well as calling in the stars of the private sector. Think like a wartime C.D. Howe.

2. "Grow a pair" about environmental tax policy. Tough tax policy?drives change when little else does. Current policy was written by Goldilocks.

3. Shamelessly subsidize?green energy and energy conservation. Get rid of the cutesy bait and switch token stuff we currently have, and give Canadians real dollars for meaningful environmental upgrades, passing on the cost to those who are still trying to turn a buck while the store burns down. Bribe me to put panels on my roof and make it easy, cheap and profitable to feed back into the grid. But triple the tax on my outdoor deck heater.

4. Make the use of throwaway plastic packaging prohibitively costly. Pass the cost directly back to distributors and manufacturers-- the marketplace will soon figure that out.

5. Stop talking about intercity high speed trains and just build the damn things. Other countries seem to have figured them?out.

6. Fund smart Canadian scientists to sort out how to solve the big climate?issues, and help our industries capitalize on these developments. Net zero can be made profitable.?Didn't we once have an internationally celebrated?National Research Council?

7. Have a short, sharp plan to get internal combustion engines off the road, and stop whining about how it hurts. We sound like little kids in the dentist’s office.

8. All of us need to share the pain in getting Alberta and Saskatchewan off petroleum addiction. It's everybody's problem and it should be at everybody's cost. You can't take Alberta's gold and whine about Alberta's tar sands.

9. Grow and give away a billion trees. I’ll take a thousand. Enlist the Scouts and the Guides and Miss Robinson’s kindergarten class.

We can do this. Who's in?