The divide and conquer routine is ancient, and still effective. As George W. Bush divided Americans with his Global War on Terror (GWOT), convincing citizens they must surrender not only their civil rights and protections to his holy war on the "other" but must also jettison the faculty of critical thinking, trusting the leader would see them through the shoals and reefs of a dangerous world, so too British Columbians are being separated. This time the lurking terror is Global Climate Change, (GCC) and the
useful idiots recruited to do the business of the Business As Usual (BAU) ruling Liberal party are environmentalists convinced that the single issue of Climate Change trumps all other considerations.
Ground zero for this clash of primarily progressive voters concerns the controversial
Run of Rivers (RoR) scheme the Liberals sprung on the province with little debate or public input. Essentially, the pro-business Liberals, in power now since 2001, partially privatized the province's publicly owned and run power provider, B.C. Hydro. They further mandated all new electrical power generation in the province be sourced solely from privately owned and operated entities. The Liberal Party has been and remains ardent proponents of the privatization and deregulation paradigm currently at the heart of the global financial debacle, and true to form, the RoR plan they would foist on B.C. privatizes profits nicely, while delivering debt and risk to the public.
It's a difficult sell for a party already scandalized by a culture of secrecy, sweetheart deals with corporations, and a leadership rank with the smell of decadence and personal corruption. And, this is where the "enviros" come in.
David Suzuki is as close to iconic an environmental figure can become in current day Canada. The geneticist and broadcaster has been on the cutting edge of environmental and scientific study for more than forty years, appearing on Canadian radio and in Canadian living rooms on television with his multi-award-winning Nature of Things program. He's written more than thirty books, hundreds of papers and articles, and made countless speaking appearances to promote sane policies, and urging citizens push hard against political inertia to make vitally necessary changes in the way we live and work happen immediately. For his efforts, he was recently voted by his fellow citizens in the top five of all-time greatest Canadians. Clearly, he's no dummy. And, I would bet my bank account he's no supporter of the ecologically disastrous policies of Gordon Campbell's corporate Liberals. Yet, there his name appears among the denigrators of the only politically feasible opposition to Clear Cut Gordo, the New Democratic Party (NDP). How is that possible?
Dr. Suzuki addresses the rising enmity within B.C.'s environmental activist community in an article, (
Huggers and Pluggers: Global Warming is Turning Friends into Foes April 23-29, 2009) published in the Victoria weekly paper, Monday Magazine and at his website, www.davidsuzuki.org, saying;
"Given what the world's leading climate-change scientists are saying about the consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels, we have little time to lose."
Taking the conventional wisdom of the causes of Climate Change for granted, and accepting the possible mitigating effects human behaviour change may have in returning the atmosphere to the relative stasis we've experienced these last ten or twenty millennia, where the schism between the enviros occurs concerns: Just what besides "time" is there to lose?
The British Columbia government, under the sobriquet 'Run of River,' and under the pretense of global environmental stewardship, has offered up for tender hundreds of rivers and lesser watercourses for electrical power harnessing. The Liberals have not, that I'm aware, used the classic "no time to lose" sales ploy. Instead, Campbell and crew have let credible voices like those of Dr. Suzuki, Tzeporah Berman, and Will Horter of the Conservation Voters of B.C. act as Cat's Paw in the attack against Carole James and the NDP. Horter's Conservation Voters of British Columbia (CVBC) has spearheaded the attack, their website refusing to endorse NDP leader, Carole James because of the party position that would reverse the Liberal Carbon Tax initiated last year. The CVBC excoriate James, employing an ABC (Anybody But Carole) campaign, that says;
"As leader, the decision to position the NDP campaign against world-leading climate policies while not putting forward improvements or better alternatives is on her shoulders. We do not endorse Carole James. Because of the New Democrats’ opposition to key strategies for energy conservation and the BC’s continentally-significant carbon tax, we cannot endorse any NDP incumbents that were members of this past caucus. We believe the party needs new leadership and new voices that take a more urgent, principled and collaborative approach to the challenges of climate change."
That's fair enough; though the Campbell carbon tax has faced broad criticism for being too modest on the one hand, while being overly detrimental to rural B.C. residents who must travel great distances for work, school, and play and have little alternative transportation options, and for disproportionately hurting farmers, and other low income workers dependent on fossil fuel for their incomes. What is ingenuous about the blistering attacks leveled at James and her incumbent caucus is the blind-eye promotion of B.C.'s current Minister of the Environment, Barry Penner.
Penner and his Liberal colleagues, the ones that will benefit Carole James' defeat, are behind the
worst environmental policies in the history of mankind. These include: The biggest promotion of the oil and gas industry in British Columbia, ever. Penner and the Liberals are behind the thousands of miles of pipelines from Alaska and Alberta that would criss-cross the province to provide oil and gas to China, Asia, and the United States; they support expanded oil and condensate traffic through British Columbia's narrow coastal straits and up the treacherous fjords to maintain the biggest single carbon producing project on planet Earth, the Alberta Tar Sands; the Gateway plan they endorse would see miles of roadways built across the province, and the creation of a super port on B.C.'s coast designed specifically for truck transport to service international trade between Asia and markets primarily in the United States; the continuing policy of selling raw logs abroad, costing mill jobs in B.C.; refusing to put a moratorium on the plunder of what little is left of the province's old growth trees, effectively destroying the primeval forests; and, the expansion of open net fish farms that threaten the survival of the ecologically essential wild salmon runs.
This is not a complete list, but instead of excoriating Penner and his caucus pals,
CVBC lauds the Liberal, saying;
"Barry is a former park ranger, lifelong environmentalist and has been a consistent champion of climate action within the Liberal caucus and in public. He helped lead the successful fight against the Sumas Energy 2 power plant, quashed the proposals for unsequestered coal plants in BC, was co-chair of B.C.’s Alternative Energy and Power Technology Task Force, and has worked with California (as well as other provinces and US states) to negotiate BC’s cap-and-trade system to combat global warming. Barry introduced the legislation in 2007 to reduce BC's emissions by 33% by 2020. Most recently he has been Minister of Environment and Minister responsible for Climate Action. Barry has stickhandled much of the criticism government has received for the tough choices that need to be made (such as the laudable carbon tax) and we endorse his re-election."
CVBC may be forgiven for taking much of Penner's biographical information from the
Liberal member's website, but in fairness to B.C. voters they might have provided more from the same site by way of context. For instance;
"Barry was appointed by Premier Campbell in 2001 to lead BC's delegation to the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER). He served as PNWER's vice-president before becoming President in June 2002. Barry continues to be actively involved in PNWER activities bringing BC’s perspective directly to legislative leaders in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska, as well as Alberta and Yukon."
More so than the Environment portfolio, PRNWR suits lawyer and trade specialist Penner much better.
PNWER is the creation of those that would "harmonize" business and government operations on both sides of the border, emphasizing P3's, or Public Private Partnerships, those entities taking profits from formerly public entities like B.C. Hydro, and delivering them to businesses that often operate a revolving door for "public servants" like the minister. They allow the public step in to carry the burden of losses, as in the case of Enron and the billions B.C. taxpayers lost in the spot energy market scandal that ultimately unwound Ken Lay's Enron and the fleecing of the public.
PNWER is predominantly business orientated, throwing in a few Mom and apple pie ecology crumbs for public consumption while their real work is maximizing profits for the few through environmentally destructive mega-projects. Here's how they describe their mission;
"With over 20 million people and over US $700 billion in gross regional product, the US Pacific Northwest and Western Canada is one of fastest growing regions of North America. We are China and East Asia’s gateway to North America, the host of the 2010 Winter Olympics and the site of several major infrastructure projects and business opportunities. Now more than ever, the Pacific Northwest needs a bi-national, regional advocate that works with both the public and private sectors."
That may be so, but it's hard to see how PNWER serves the "public sectors" beyond enriching a select few of its members.
One of British Columbia's true environmental heroes, Alexandra Morton is embroiled in the increasingly nasty back and forth between B.C. environmentalists. She expresses doubt that the salmon, ultimately responsible for the entire coastal ecosystem, can survive the kinds of policies Campbell's Liberals have and will continue to embrace.
She says David Suzuki wrote to her expressing his dismay that his David Suzuki Foundation was included in the broadly publicized press communique pillorying Carole James. She says Will Horton is strategically concerned not with the upcoming election, but with a "next" election, presumably without Carole James as leader of the NDP.
She says the Fraser salmon run for one will likely not be around when that next election time comes.
What is clear here is: The divisive seeds sown within the British Columbia environmental movement will create enough short-term confusion and infighting to allow the corporate Liberals another mandate, as Morton fears. It also provides a great model for other jurisdictions where already corporate interests are using constituent's growing environmental consciousness to divide progressive voters with the hope of maintaining business as usual policies.
Divisive "Us" and "Them" tactics has all but destroyed America, and the world economy. Pitting environmentalists against one another to allow business first-and-last candidates retain government office in British Columbia will do the same for the province's ecology. Climate Change is an important issue, and perhaps the biggest single challenge humanity will ever face, but it cannot be allowed to be used to waive environmental assessment provisions for mega-projects; it must not be adopted as the one and only issue, affording sacrificial exceptionalism to the local environment for all whose projects are deemed to be in the interest of a greater global ecology.
In his article for Monday Magazine, David Suzuki backs down a bit from the "all or nothing for CC" position, saying;
"Global warming is, without a doubt, the most critical environmental issue we face. Clearly, there's no time to waste, but unless we tie our shoelaces before we race out the door, we're guaranteed to trip ourselves up long before we get to our destination. We need to ensure that our solutions don't lead to the destruction of the very thing we're trying to protect."
Just so, professor. Now, whose shoes will best serve getting B.C. to that destination? Will it be Gordon Campbell with his solid anti-ecological record, or the NDP that brought in things like the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) to protect farm land from the ambitions of housing developers, as Gordon Campbell was in a previous incarnation, and who oppose the grotesque Alberta Tar Sands seeping its way across our British Columbia lands and waters? Will nature's interests be protected by Gordon Campbell's Environment minister who signed off on expanding the Grizzly bear trophy hunt, or the opposition NDP who
would shut it down?*
I believe we must make tough decisions this election. I also believe, we cannot afford to wait for a single party or candidate that answers every one of our concerns. Life is just not like that.
It's election time in British Columbia, and again the big issue is: How do we living in this beautiful and blessed part of the world best utilize our environment to meet the needs of the people and wildlife that make B.C. such a wonderful place to be?" 
