Harper vs. the World

Prime Minister Stephen Harper showed off his strong leadership this week by refusing to follow other party leaders in offsetting the carbon emissions from his campaign air travel.

Why should he? Mr. Harper has always been completely disdainful of “so-called ” green house gases. He shouldn’t have to kowtow to such politically correct posturing by his opponents by even feigning to care about global warming.

He has never allowed himself to be bullied by those eggheads at the IPCC , whose latest synthesis report was summed up by the New York Times : “that reductions in greenhouse gasses had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster”

What does the largest peer-review exercise in the history of science have to tell someone like Harper, who instead relies on good old fashion common sense?

As Harper pointed out in a fundraising letter , this “controversial theory ” of climate change is based on “tentative and contradictory scientific evidence" and focuses on carbon dioxide, which is "essential to life."

He went on to point out the Kyoto Accord is “essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations”.

That’s the kind of courageous talk we want from our Prime Minister, and we should be proud that he represents Canada to the world. Not since the days of Pierre Trudeau has a Canadian leader make such a splash on the world stage.

According to the Canadian Press at the Kampala climate negotiations last year, “some foreign diplomats were so disgusted that they sought out Canadian journalists to tell them what their country was doing behind closed doors...One called the Harper approach a perfect recipe for making sure nothing happens.”

But who cares what the world thinks of Canada? Certainly not a strong leader like Harper. He had the guts to cause German Chancellor Angela Merkel to fume that, “Of course we are not happy at this point that Canada has abandoned Kyoto's goals.”

Nor has he has ever pandered to special interests like the David Suzuki who said, "Stephen Harper not only opposes Kyoto, but he refutes the science. He’s back in the dinosaur era. Harper is just totally out of it."

And it’s not just Suzuki. These “special interests” are increasingly the Canadian public. A poll last year found that Canadians were more concerned about climate change than any other developed country except France. Two thirds of Canadians felt that climate change was a “very serious problem”.

Another poll released just this summer showed that even after ballooning energy costs, Canadians are still demanding action from the politicians on climate change. It takes a strong leader like Harper to completely ignore the know-nothings in the scientific community, our trading partners, or the voting public.

As far as the carbon offsets for his plane, Harper should be commended burning as much jet fuel as he can. After all he is only supporting our oil and gas industry. He showed his loyalty for the oil patch by flying from Ottawa to Quebec City to Vancouver - all in one day!

Now that’s leadership.