Follow the Money

Does it seem strange that some oil companies seem willing to acknowledge the massive implications of global warming while others are fighting it tooth and nail?

David Anderson was wondering the same thing when he was Canada’s Environment Minister between 1999 and 2005. About half of the oil companies he dealt with including Exxon Mobil were very resistant to reducing carbon emissions, or even to admitting that global warming was real. And the other half?

According to Anderson, “the other half were very friendly. Shell, PB, Syncrude, Suncor, all those companies were quite willing to put in restrictions [to curb climate change].”

And why not? Ballooning oil prices meant soaring profits so they could easily afford the costs of mitigating carbon emissions.

“God, they were making money like it was going out of style. You just wouldn’t believe the money that’s being made. They could quite afford the trivial amount, which was about 38 cents a barrel as the calculation for climate change measures to make them carbon neutral. Christ, they were getting up to $75 a barrel... Everything over $20 a barrel is profit,” says Anderson.

So why does the former Minister think companies like Exxon Mobil weren’t willing to move on this? He offers some interesting speculations:

“One of the issues that I think is really important is the impact of the quarterly statement. No one likes to have their quarterly statement doing anything but going up and up because that affects share price. Share price affects bonuses and pay of executives. The head of Exxon gets paid $70 million per year. A lot of money would be affected by what you might call tremors in the market that might come from climate change measures…”

Stock options have become a very popular way for North American companies to motivate senior executives to pump up the share price. The idea is simple, rather than paying managers a straight salary, companies give them stock options to buy company stock at a set price. If these executives can increase the share price they can cash in those options and reap staggering profits.

“The use of stock options has skyrocketed over the last 20 years,” said Kin Lo, Associate Professor of Accounting at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business.

However, making senior management fixated on share price rather than business fundamentals can also affect corporate ethics. “I believe the prevalence [of stock options] contributes to some of the malfeasance that you have seen, the big blowups with Enron and WorldCom”, says Lo.

However in the case of oil companies, it also creates a gravy train that most senior executives would want to keep going at all costs.

Soaring global oil prices have meant that oil companies are recording record profits, and sending share prices into the stratosphere – regardless of company performance. For instance, Exxon Mobil’s share price has almost doubled since 2004. This is making some senior oil executives very rich, whether they are doing a good job or not.

According to a recent study from the Institute for Policy Studies, in 2005 the average CEO compensation for top 15 US based oil companies was a whopping$32.7 million - more than four hundred times what the average oil industry worker is paid. Compare that with the average pay of CEOs for all large US firms at $11.6 million.

And then there is the paycheque of former Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond. In 2005, Mr. Raymond’s base salary was $4 million - not bad jack to be sure, but the real money came from soaring share prices. That year, Mr. Raymond made an additional $65 million compensation in the form of stock options and other benefits - fully 93% of his compensation. With a payday like that, who wants to rock the boat by dealing with climate change?

Compare that to the compensation paid to executives with the world’s number two and three oil companies in the world: BP and Shell – both based in Europe. BP CEO Lord Browne made $5.6 million in 2005 – not so shabby either, but a mere 8% of what Exxon’s CEO was paid. Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer made just $4.1million – one sixteenth what Lee Raymond was paid.

Interestingly there are also some striking differences in the way these companies dealt with climate change. BP now officially stands for “beyond petroleum”. The CEO of Shell has stated publicly that global warming makes him "really very worried for the planet". Both companies signed onto a letter to UK Prime Minster Tony Blair calling for urgent government regulation on climate change and are investing heavily in alternative energy technologies.

In contrast, Exxon has been dubbed by Greenpeace the “the world’s number one climate criminal” stating that they have “done more than any other company to stop the world from tackling climate change”. They were recently implicated by the Union of Concerned scientists of funding a Big Tobacco-style PR campaign to misinform the public on climate science.

Anderson speculates that the over reliance on stock options puts many North American oil company executives in a compromised position. “Deep down most of these people knew the game had to end eventually and we had to take climate change measures. Deep down what they were really saying was ‘I know that I’m not doing the right thing but I am going to pass that on to my successor to handle the problem. I’m going to get out of here with my bonuses intact and I am going to get out of here a wealthy man.’”

That last point might be particularly poignant in the case of Exxon Mobil. When Lee Raymond retired as CEO of Exxon Mobil at the end of 2005, he was awarded one of the most lucrative retirement packages in corporate history – totaling almost $400 million, including stock options, pension, use of a corporate jet, and $210,800 in country club fees and other perks. This includes the $69 million in cash and stock options he made that year.

When I contacted Exxon Mobil by phone they denied that compensation schemes of senior executives like Mr. Raymond could effect on how the company has responded to climate change. “The largest portion of his compensation is restricted stock and those restrictions are five and ten years and those restrictions maintain on stock even after he retires…He can’t sell it until the restriction matures and some of those restrictions go out to the year 2015”, said Mark Boudreaux, Media Relations Manager for Exxon Mobil Corporation.

Mr. Raymond will be 77 in 2015. It seems rather strange that he will not be able to fully collect for all his years of work at Exxon Mobil until he is two years past the life expectancy of the average male in the United States.

Perhaps is not as simple as that. According to Lo, “what someone can do is to arrange an 'equity monetization,' which allows him in essence to ‘short’ the [restricted] stock with an investment banker. It’s the same as selling the restricted stock at that date. Later on when the restriction comes off you can net out the two positions… There are plenty of investment bankers that would be willing to do that for a fee.”

If there are specific restrictions prohibiting Raymond from short selling his restricted stock, Exxon is not telling their shareholders about them. Looking at the legal filings of Exxon Mobil to the US government, it appeared to Lo that “there is nothing to prevent to Lee Raymond… to arrange for a separate side deal to get around the restrictions.”

Interestingly, Raymond also sits on the advisory board of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which recently offered scientists $10,000 plus expenses to undermine or dispute the findings of the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Exxon partially funds the American Enterprise Institute.

Could something as trivial as the personal finances of already obscenely wealthy individuals caused some powerful oil companies to resist dealing with the most pressing issue of our times? It's a big world. Stranger things have happened.


Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer living in Vancouver. The piece ran in the February 15, 2007 issue of the Georgia Straight.

California Dreamin

Will he or won't he? That was the question on the minds of many British Columbians this week as Gordon Campbell prepared to release the throne speech and announce whether B.C. was really going to follow the lead of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and bring in mandatory caps on carbon emissions.

The verdict? Nice wrapping, but not much inside.

First, the good news. While some North American governments are still questioning the science behind climate change, that time has now thankfully passed in B.C. Campbell has gone on record as stating this is an urgent problem requiring serious action.

According to Lisa Matthaus of Sierra Club B.C., "the province is now saying out loud climate change is real, the science is indisputable, we can no longer procrastinate, and that living up to these obligations is going to mean economic opportunities for British Columbia." The public can begin holding him, and future governments, to that self-evident truth.

It's about time.

The other significant point about yesterday's announcement is that the B.C. government is for the first time committing to hard caps on carbon emissions. Specially, Campbell committed B.C. to reducing reduce carbon emissions 10 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. While that is more than Arnold Schwarzenegger announced last August, 2020 is long way off and it remains very unclear how (and if) we are going to get there.

On the bright side, Campbell has let the carbon cap genie out of the bottle and it will be very difficult to put it back in. That milestone, no matter how mushy at present, should be applauded.

There is also the old political principle of "only Nixon could go to China." Campbell is a pro-business premier. It would have much more difficult for the NDP to make the same announcement without howls of indignation from the business community.

But before we get too giddy, let's have a hard look at the details -- or in this case, the lack thereof.

The major concern is timing. Governments are inclined to make sweeping announcements that come into effect only after their current term in office expires. This announcement is no exception.

Of all the initiatives announced yesterday, only two have any immediate impact. First, all new vehicles bought or leased by the B.C. government will be hybrids. Big deal.

More importantly, Victoria will now begin requiring all new coal-fired generating plants to sequester 100 per cent of their carbon emissions. This new requirement may well kill the two proposed coal plants planned for the B.C. Interior. That would be significant, but time will tell what actually happens.

The rest of the throne speech dealt largely with policy to be developed at some undetermined time in the future, or targets fully 13 to 43 years from now.

While there have been many glowing comparisons between Campbell and what Schwarzenegger introduced in California, let's not get too starry eyed. The Governator legislated hard targets, with hard short-term milestones, after a long period of meaningful consultation with a variety of stakeholders.

Campbell consulted with no environmental groups prior to this week's announcement, the first target is not until 2020, and there is currently no legislation to back it up. In the words of Lisa Matthaus of Sierra Club B.C., "I think Gordon's still has a bit of beefing up to do."

For these reasons, the response from many in the environmental community has been largely lukewarm. "I think it's a start, I don't think it's a good start, but I think it's a start. We still have a long way to go," said Karen Campbell of the Pembina Institute. "Climate science is telling us that we need to act now. The longer we wait, the more action it's going to take later on. The quickest, most decisive action needs to happen now, not thirteen years from now."

Also worrisome is that while the 2020 target is province-wide, the interim targets (yet to be determined) are "sectoral" targets. That means that car emissions might go down while oil and gas emissions could go up. Without short-term province-wide caps, there is no guarantee that we would reduce overall emissions.

Perhaps most concerning was what was not announced yesterday. For instance, a good chunk of the throne speech was devoted to limiting urban sprawl but there was certainly no talk about canceling the much-disputed Gateway project to expand local highways and twin the Port Mann Bridge.

The province is actually maintaining with a straight face that this $3 billion boondoggle will actually reduce greenhouse emissions by reducing cars idling in traffic, rather than instead encouraging single-occupancy commuting and further urban sprawl in the Fraser Valley.

There was also no talk of canceling proposed new subsidies to the oil and gas sector. This month, Provincial Energy, Mines and Petroleum Minister Richard Neufeld announced that he was considering a "net-profit" royalty scheme for oil and gas companies that would let them avoid paying B.C. taxpayers until their capital costs are paid off.

This type of perverse corporate giveaway helped fuel the explosive growth in Alberta's tar sands, and is something that even the federal Conservatives seem to be cooling to. Oil companies do not need more taxpayer money to assist them in making our climate problems worse, especially while health care, child care and education are going begging.

Yesterday also would have been a fine time to announce a tax on carbon emissions. This simple policy shift would negate the need for much costly and cumbersome regulation by putting an economic cost on something that currently is a freebee, namely dumping climate-altering carbon into the air. We charge a tipping fee at the dump; what's the difference? This policy was noticeably absent from the throne speech.

Lastly, it was ironic that a speech so focused on meeting the enormous challenges of climate change was completely silent about meeting our obligations under Kyoto. That glaring omission was not lost on environmental policy experts. "I am concerned that by [B.C.] walking away from Kyoto, that this may actually be giving an out to the Harper government so that they can walk away from Kyoto too. This is not the time to be walking away from Kyoto," said Pembina's Karen Campbell.

It seems that what was really announced this week was that the political ground in B.C. has shifted a long way to the green end of the spectrum. Future governments of any stripe can no longer ignore the environment, and that is a major accomplishment.

While Campbell deserves some credit for yesterday's announcement, the real accolades should go to the B.C. public. What is driving this sea change in environmental policy in Canada is not some enviro-epiphany on the part of our elected leaders. It is pure political pragmatism. Soaring public concern about the environment means that politicians ignore this growing issue at their peril.

So give yourself a pat on the back. Don't get too comfortable though. The devil is in the details and we all need to keep a close watch in what is announced in next weeks budget.

Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer based in Vancouver. This piece was published in the Tyee on February 14, 2007.

Journalistic Malpractice

"Global warming is an unproven theory."

"Trying to stop it will cost the economy dearly and accomplish nothing."

"It is being promoted by environmentalists as a cynical ploy to raise money."

Wait a minute... Does it seem like you're reading your local newspaper?

Many North American media outlets continue to supply the public with such a steady diet of such misinformation and skewed science on the critical issue of global warming that it might be best described as “journalistic malpractice”.

Hyperbole? Hardly.

Consider this thought experiment: Would it be ethical for a news editor in 2007 to publish an opinion piece by a tobacco industry funded “expert”, long inactive within the scientific community, stating that there is no proven link between tobacco and cancer?

Such journalistic mischief went on for many years, clouding the public debate and no doubt costing many lives. However the days when such “balanced reporting” would be considered acceptable have long past.

Even Exxonmobil, which funded the climate-change deniers for years, finally admitted this month that global warming is real -- even though it has been obvious to the scientific community for many years that humans were contributing to the problem through emissions of greenhouse gases.

Yet many papers like the National Post and Los Angeles Times repeatedly published articles by such deniers as Patrick Michaels, and S. Fred Singer – who some might remember from his previous efforts to ally public fears about the dangers of ozone depletion and second hand smoke.

And then there is the curious case of Dr. Tim Ball. He is a long retired professor from the University of Winnipeg and a well-known climate change denier who has not published a peer-reviewed scientific publication on climatology in over a decade.

That not to say that Dr. Ball hasn’t been busy writing lately. Over the last five years he has published no less than thirty-nine opinion pieces, and thirty-two letters to the editor in twenty-four Canadian newspapers. Fifty of these pieces ran in papers owned by Canwest Global. These efforts totaled an incredible 44,500 words. As a freelance writer myself, I am in awe at Dr. Ball’s success in placing his writing in the nation’s papers.

This is even more surprising given the monotony of his material. Virtually all of these articles were variations on a single theme: that science does not support that global warming is caused by humans. In the byline of every opinion piece, he was characterized as an expert on climatology. What is the public to think?

Among his unorthodox views, published as recently as last month in Calgary Sun:

- Global temperatures have declined since 1998 in direct contradiction to computer models on which Kyoto is based.

- Ice core records show temperature rises before CO2 rises, not as a result of it.

- Evidence mounts that pre-industrial levels of CO2 may have been much higher than the 280 ppm assumed by environmentalists.

- New research shows changes in output of the sun accounts for most of the recent warming and cooling of our planet.

- The primary evidence of human influence on climate, the "hockey stick" temperature graph of Michael Mann, has been debunked as manipulated and wrong.

A basic tenet of journalism is fact checking. Do these surprising claims have any scientific basis?

I phoned up Dr. Richard Gammon, Professor of Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington to ask. Somewhat exasperated, he refuted all of these points as either scientifically baseless or grossly misleading.

Strange.

I then called Dr. Andrew Weaver, a leading Canadian researcher in the field of climate science who holds a Canada Research Chair in Climate Modeling in Analysis at the University of Victoria.

He is also the chief editor of “Journal of Climate” – the leading academic publication in this field, and a lead author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is the largest peer review exercise in the history of science, involving 2000 climate researchers from 100 countries.

Weaver also quickly confirmed that Ball’s well-published assertions have no scientific basis.

What’s going on? Do newspaper editors not possess a phone? How can it be that Dr. Ball managed to publish all those articles stating more of less the same thing if what he is saying lacks scientific merit?

First let’s start with the basics. Here is what Gammon had to say about Tim Ball’s doubts that there is no link between humans and climate change.

“This is like asking ‘is the moon round?’ or ‘does smoking cause cancer? We’re at a point now where there is no responsible position stating that humans are not responsible for climate change. That is just not where the science is…for a long time, for at least five years and probably ten years, in the international scientific community has been very clear”

In case there is any doubt, Gammon goes on. “This is not the balance of evidence argument for a civil lawsuit, this is the criminal standard beyond a reasonable doubt. We’ve been there for a long time and I think the media has really not presented that to the public.”

How does Gammon explain many of the climate science holdouts? “You can always find somebody paid for by the Western Fuels Association or Exxon Mobil to stir the pot and say that we don’t know yet or we are still confused and we need to listen to all sides and ExxonMobil will take that point of view.”

The role of the media in shaping the so-called climate debate is much larger however than merely providing space to industry actors claiming scientific credibility. Consider the editorial positions of many of the major newspapers in North America.

From the Los Angles Times last year: “Major news media have gone after scientists who argue there's still time to study global warming rather than plunge into some half-baked environmental jihad that could waste possibly trillions of dollars.”

Vancouver Sun business columnist Michael Campbell regularly holds forth on climate change. Last year he scolded the scientific community for their slapdash work:

“I see little evidence that proponents of man-made global warming know how damaging the shoddy science behind some of their claims has been to their cause. They don't seem to understand that for many of us, global warming is not an article of faith, but rather of science. And when the science is faulty, it damages the credibility of their cause.”

We can only assume that Mr. Campbell is referring to those dullards at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their 2001 assessment report stated “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities” .

Perhaps he was referring to the Academies of Sciences of 11 countries including the US and UK, who released a joint statement in 2005 stating that, "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.”

By the way, Mr. Campbell’s academic training is in economics.

In his polysyllabic fashion, Rex Murphy also hectored the nation on the issue of climate science last month in his column in the Globe and Mail: “It is emphatically time for the most scrupulous and disinterested inquiry to determine the solid core of what is really known about the subject, separated from the great clouds of speculation, advocacy, geopolitics and calculated alarmism that overhang and shadow that core.”

It is as if these opinion writers and the scientific community exist on separate planets. Has the media never heard of the numerous, if pedantic, ways that the world’s scientific community has been trying to warn the world about global warming? When does it become unethical for the media to be used as a PR tool by a powerful corporate sector to delay meaningful regulation?

That was the question asked by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in a report released this month called “Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to "Manufacture Uncertainty" on Climate Change”

This report draws the obvious parallel to the infamous and highly successful PR campaign by the tobacco industry to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the public about the link between smoking and cancer.

Like oil companies today, Big Tobacco faced costly regulation due mounting scientific evidence of the dangers of their product. However they had a problem. They knew that almost no one would believe them if they tried to tell the public themselves that cigarettes were safe.

Their solution? Tobacco companies realized that they must instead fund phony scientists to speak on their behalf. These “skeptics” had two important advantages over real scientists.

First, they didn’t have to bother defending their positions in the scientific community because scientists weren’t the audience of this campaign, the public was. Like a washed up boxer who now only picks fights in bars, these skeptics, many of whom have impressive sounding credentials, restrict their pugilisms to the popular press rather than the peer reviewed scientific journals.

On this footing, it is a rather unfair fight. The rules of engagement in the media are very different than in the scientific community. The mastery of the sound bite rather than possessing robust data and an elegant question almost always carries the day in the media minute. The notoriously bad communication skills of some active researchers do not help matters.

The second advantage is that “skeptics” do not have to win the public debate, only cloud public opinion so as to delay regulation.

A now famous internal memo from the Brown & Williamson tobacco company put it bluntly: “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”

Compare this with a memo from the American Petroleum Institute in 1998 calling for a “campaign to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the industry’s views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify.”

What was old is new again. Remarkably, this chilling plan by Big Oil to use the media to deceive the public was largely ignored by news outlets when it became public.

According to the USC report, Exxon Mobil “funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science”

If there is a significant difference between the PR efforts of the tobacco industry and fossil fuel sector, it is size. The oil, gas and coal sectors make Big Tobacco seem positively puny by comparison.

The fossil fuel industry is the largest industrial sector the world has ever known, currently worth $8 to 9 trillion annually. This is four to five times larger than the next largest industrial sector . By this yardstick, the amount of money invested in funding climate change deniers is pocket change to Big Oil.

The oil industry is also refreshingly frank about where they put their dollars. In their own words, “ExxonMobil is committed to supporting organizations that…promote informed discussion on issues of direct relevance to business and the company’s ongoing operations."

Has this campaign against climate science been successful? You bet. It may well go down as the most audacious, successful and cynical campaign in public relations history.

Consider a recent paper entitled “Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press”, published in 2004 on the very subject of how climate change science is distorted by the media. The authors analyzed media stories from the five most prestigious newspapers in the US, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal over a five-year period to see what relative weight was being given to mainstream (i.e real) scientists and so-called “skeptics”.

“From a total of 3,543 articles, we examined a random sample of 636 articles. Our results showed that the majority of these stories were, in fact, structured on the journalistic norm of balanced reporting, giving the impression that the scientific community was embroiled in a rip-roaring debate on whether or not humans were contributing to global warming.”

The report found that the “US prestige-press coverage of global warming from 1988 to 2002 has contributed to a significant divergence of popular discourse from scientific discourse…that the prestige press’s adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming and resultant action.”

In plain English this translates as: the public is being misinformed on climate science by a poor journalism that continues to tell both sides of the story, even when there is no other side. The resultant political inaction might well kill the planet.

Returning to our original question, is it then ethical for an editor to provide space to industry-funded spokespeople claiming scientific credibility they don’t have?

“In my opinion, that is where ethical problem lies”, says Eric Jandciu, Research Coordinator at the UBC School of Journalism. “You are in effect proving misinformation to the public because there is no more [scientific] debate on this and we seem to be very far behind in Canada and the US. In the European media for years now they have stopped with this debate.”

While it must be tempting for editors to run material that runs counter to conventional beliefs, is there something else going on? For instance, could major sponsors be affecting editorial content?

According to the Canadian Newspaper Association of the top 30 advertisers in Canadian papers, 15 are from the auto industry. Car ads represent fully 54% of those revenues – totaling $549 million to Canadian newspaper publishers each year from the top 30 alone.

But what does money have to do with anything?

Considering the enormous consequences of continued inaction on climate change this shoddy journalism is not only unfortunate, it is irresponsible in the extreme.

Has this systematically inaccurate coverage influenced public opinion? Of course. That’s the whole point. Consider these public opinion numbers.

A poll from the fall of last year showed that fully 50% of Canadians still believed that “most scientists disagreed with each about whether global warming was happening”. In the US, the numbers are even worse. An ABC news poll last year showed that 64% of Americans believed the majority of scientists are still arguing whether global warming was even happening.

Which brings us the crux of the matter. How important is public opinion for influencing politics? Perhaps mark Twain said it best;

“Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.”

I asked Former Environment Minister David Anderson about the limitations that public opinion can place on policy makers, and how the oil sector influenced climate coverage while he was Minister. Did skewed coverage on climate science make his job as Minister more difficult?

“Of course”, said Anderson. “There was a very professional group of people who managed to get a large number of articles and letters to the editors [from climate skeptics] into Canadian media – they worked hard at it”, says Anderson.

“If you look at the columnists in Canada, you will find a very surprising interest in the views of dissenters. Just about every columnist in the Globe and the Vancouver Sun recites this intellectually pre-prepared stuff on climate science. Where does it come from? In Canada there has been a successful campaign to get the views of the deniers into the media, and it has been enormously successful. It has been very secretive and someone has been funding it…”

Why did Big Oil care about so much about little old Canada? Anderson is blunt:

“Bush said restrictions on greenhouse gases will destroy the US economy.”

Therefore the US based oil companies “never wanted a North American economy - Canada, close to the US in every respect –to succeed and prove him wrong. We were quite important to the American campaign. We succeed, and Bush looks as incorrect on climate and the effect on the American economy, as he is looking on Iraq.”

“They did not want Canada to succeed [in creating a green economy] because they knew that it wasn’t that hard. They knew the loss, especially in a growth economy such as ours, would be essentially imperceptible. No calculation suggested that this was going to be a severe dislocation to the Canadian economy.”

So what then is Anderson’s explanation for the Liberals lack of greater progress on climate policy? “You had the official opposition against you, had the provinces against you, you had business against you…” and lastly “you had a coherent campaign in the media against you.”

Anderson believes Canadian editors “were consistently getting under their noses the results of a sophisticated campaign of communications,” and that newspaper columnists “repeat some things in language and format which is so consistent across the board that it can only come from one source... that’s the people to whom the communications experts were focusing on. They focused on media.”

That campaign didn’t make Anderson’s job any easier. While the liberals record on reducing greenhouse gases was admittedly abysmal, so was the public understanding of the issue. In 1999, when Anderson became environment minister, only 2% of Canadians believed global warming was the most important environmental issue.

The political importance of keeping the public confused about climate science was made clear in a remarkable memo by Whitehouse spin-doctor Frank Luntz to the Bush administration in 2003:

“The debate is closing (against us) but is not yet closed. There is still a window or opportunity to challenge the science… should the public come to believe the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate…”

Perhaps the most compelling evidence that the North American public has been grossly misled by our news media comes this month from the biggest oil company of them all, ExxonMobil.

While Tim Ball and Michael Campbell seem utterly steadfast for the need for greater scientific debate and research, Exxon seems now not so sure.

This month the world’s largest oil company executed a stunning flip flop on global warming. Kenneth Cohen, Exxon's vice president for public affairs, acknowledged that "we know enough now -- or, society knows enough now -- that the risk is serious and action should be taken.”

They also took the opportunity to publicly announce that they were cutting support to such notorious climate change deniers as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and “five or six” other groups active in the so-called climate science debate. According to Cohen, "The issue has evolved.”

That is not to say that much precious time has not been wasted, but this development will hopefully begin to shift the public debate from arguing science to debating policy.

Weaver agrees. “Debating the science is good but it doesn’t happen in the opinion editorial pages of newspapers, it happens in the scientific community”. At the same time he feels “debating the policy [of global warming] is crucial and that is what has to happen in public discourse”

Gammon thinks that media coverage is improving but has a long way to go. “It’s beginning to move to where we need to be but not nearly fast enough. In my mind people are not scared enough. It’s a funny issue because the scientists are more worried about it than the general public.”

“You just can’t give up though because these guys [climate deniers] don’t give up. As long as they can plant the seed in the public mind that this is all controversial, they’ve won. That’s all they have to do. We need to keep strengthening the science and saying it as clearly as possible and working with the media so that the media gets the right message out.

Personally I believe Gammon is being far too charitable. I find it hard to believe that media professionals - typically superb at research and fact checking - have simply not yet figured out that science resolved this debate five to ten years ago.

How much is a stake here? Do scientists like Weaver think dealing with global warming is urgent? “Incredibly urgent. On a scale of one to ten, how about ten? I don’t worry so much for me as a Canadian; I worry about the global instability that will result from it. An example I give is “ what are we going to do about 100 million people that are displaced from Bangladesh this century?”

The possibility of tipping points are particularly troubling to Weaver. “Permafrost in the northern hemisphere is a massive reservoir of carbon...If you look at the last time there were massive methane releases [that would result from melting permafrost], 94 percent of species of life on the planet died. If we don’t have this baby turned around by 2030, it’s game over for an awful lot of people.”

What about the assertion that we need more research before we can act? Weaver bristles. “What bugs me most is that I have been criticized that the only reason I am doing this is that I want more research money. The irony is that [scientists] are saying we don’t need more research. What we need is action…we know what’s going on. We know what needs to be done. The thing that would get me more research money would be to say ‘yeah, there’s a lot of uncertainty and I really think before we do policy, we need to spend some money to figure this thing out’”. That would be the purely selfish thing to say but that has not been the response from the [scientific] community.”

He also offers this advice to the media: “ What newspaper editors have to realize is that there are people out there who are using them. People don’t liked being used but they have to realize that they are being used… Rather than thinking that they are serving the public discourse, ask the question ‘am I being used to further an agenda?’ And the answer with the issue of climate change is yes.”

There is a certain irony in a career scientist like Weaver seeing so clearly what is wrong with how the media covers climate change, when he has had to endure so many media commentators publicly lecturing him on science.

Lastly, there has been a fascinating twist to the Tim Ball story. In April of last year, one of his op-eds in the Calgary Herald slamming the science of climate change raised the ire of a real scientist, Dr. Dan Johnston at the University of Lethbridge.

Johnston wrote a letter to the editor questioning the qualifications and academic credentials of Dr. Ball, and was quickly sued for defamation (no irony there). Ball filed a suit against not only Johnston, but the editors of the Calgary Herald for $325,000 for among other things “damages to his income earning capacity as a sought after speaker with respect to global warming”

The court documents filed by the Herald in their defence are illuminating. They state that Ball “is a member of the Friends of Science, a group dedicated to discrediting mainstream scientific beliefs and theories regarding the contribution of human sourced greenhouse gases to global warming” and that “the Friends of Science and the plaintiff are, at least in part, supported and funded by members of the oil and gas industry who have a vested interest in limiting the impact of the Kyoto accord on their business.”

The Herald also stated that Ball has published few articles in academically recognized peer-reviewed scientific journals”, and that he “has not conducted research regarding the relationship between climate and elements within the atmosphere.”

Lastly, here is how editors of the Herald characterized the credibility of a man whose opinion pieces on climate change they had chosen to publish eight times in the last five years: “the plaintiff is viewed as a paid promoter of the agenda of the oil and gas industry rather than as a practicing scientist”.

Strange. This was not how he was identified in his bylines. In his op-ed of April of last year, the Herald cited him as “a Victoria-based environmental consultant. He was the first climatology PhD in Canada and worked as a professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg for 28 years.”

Therein lies the heart of the matter. This is not about freedom of speech. No one is suggesting that papers should not have the freedom to publish whatever and whomever they want, as long as it is not violating any laws.

The question instead is one of properly identify their sources – a basic tenet of good journalism.

Imagine if the next time Dr. Ball was cited in the popular press he was instead identified as “a paid promoter of the agenda of the oil and gas industry rather than as a practicing scientist”, as the editors of the Calgary Herald stated in their sworn statement to the court.

That might better arm the reading public to draw their own conclusions, both about his provocative comments, as well as the wisdom of the news outlet in publishing them.

Not much chance of that it seems. Incredibly, Tim Ball’s controversial op-eds have been published an additional eight times in Canwest papers since Ball sued the editors of the Calgary Herald on September 1, 2006. In all of those cases, Ball was cited as a former professor at the University of Winnipeg.

What if we demanded more from our media on what is emerging as the leading issue of the 21st century. What if the mainstream media stopped being a big part of the problem, and became part of the solution?

Does it seem strange for instance, that while the environment is the number one issue of concern for Canadians, that the Globe and Mail or the Vancouver Sun have no one writing a regular column on the environment? Arguably, both these papers already have several commentators that regularly spill buckets of ink questioning our movement towards a greener world. A bit of balance would be nice.

Or how about our venerable CBC?

Radio One has dedicated programs for business, sports, advertising, science, Quebec culture, pop culture, food, story telling, spirituality, comedy, and theatre. There are three separate shows on writing and books, and fully eleven programs on music. CBC’s television networks include stand-alone programs on fashion, hairstyles, gardening, antiques and even fly-fishing.

Amid this dizzying Can-Con diversity, however, there is one glaring omission. At present, there is no dedicated CBC radio or television program on the number one issue of concern to Canadians: The environment.

If any of these editors and producers need a writer, I’m available.

Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer. This piece ran in the Georgia Straight on January 25, 2007

Harper and the Environment Part 2

Expediency has always been the mainstay of politics. Former Alabama Governor George Wallace famously recanted his segregationist beliefs in the American South as the political winds changed. Jean Chrétien flip-flopped on the distinct society issue when the time was right.

Into that storied company strides Stephen Harper, who last week newly proclaimed his commitment to the environment. “We've clearly determined we need to do more”, announced the Prime Minister as he replaced Rona Ambrose with John Baird, one of his most valuable players.

There is nothing like a stiff change in public opinion to send our politicians back to the ideological drawing board. However, before we embrace his newly minted green credentials, let’s have a look at what Mr. Harper has actually done on the environment in his last year in office. Some notable milestones:

April 13: Three months after his election, Harper quietly cancelled fifteen federal programs meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This announcement was made on a Thursday afternoon before the Easter long weekend, presumably in an effort to sweep this important policy shift under the carpet.

The axed programs included the “One Tonne Challenge” as well as the Energuide program, which provided incentives to retrofit 300,000 Canadian homes since the late 1990’s - saving on average 30% in energy use. Also cut were 40 public information offices across the country and several scientific and research programs on climate change.

These cuts were made in spite of the fact that a recent Treasury Board review had determined the majority of these programs were cost effective.

That same day, Environment Canada scientist Mark Tushingham, who had penned a novel set in the near future about how climate change could affect Canada, was forbidden by the Rona Ambrose’s office to speak at his own book launch. His editor had driven from New Brunswick to Ottawa for the abruptly canceled event at the National Press Club.

Mr. Harper’s comment on this affront to the public service, free speech and scientific thought did little to quell speculation that the gag order actually came straight from the top: “I not only hope, but expect, that all elements of the bureaucracy will be working with us to achieve our objectives”

April 25: Rona Ambrose announces to reporters that Canada now supports the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate - an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol championed by George Bush that lacks any mandatory emission targets and is widely ridiculed by the environmental community.

May 2: The Conservatives' first federal budget fails to even mention the Kyoto Protocol to control greenhouse gas emissions.

May 10: Minister Rona Ambrose tells Parliament that Canada had “no hope” of reaching the reductions of greenhouse gases Canada committed to under Kyoto.

The international optics of this surrender are particularly embarrassing. At the time, Canada was the chair of the Kyoto treaty and played host to the world on the treaty not five months prior in Montreal. Then Minister Stephan Dion had helped broker a pivotal deal to keep the international agreement alive.

The new Canadian government now seemed to be telling the world that any efforts by Canada to meet our legal obligations under Kyoto work are essentially a waste of time. Ironically, Ms. Ambrose was scheduled to chair a UN meeting the following week in Bonn Germany to expand the Kyoto agreement to include developing countries. The David Suzuki Foundation and Climate Action Network both called for Ambrose to resign as president of these important international negotiations.

October 19: The “Clean Air Act” is introduced to Parliament. It is widely criticized as far too weak, lacking any mechanisms to cap carbon emissions until at least 2020.

November 12: Rona Ambrose represents Canada at a UN conference in Nairobi to combat climate change. Her message to the world? “We are on track to meet all of our obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, but not the target.”

So absurd was this position that it was difficult for Canadian environmentalists attending the Nairobi conference to keep a civil tongue in their head. “What kind of misleading nonsense is this?" demanded Steven Guilbeault, the climate critic from Greenpeace – a member of the environmental community from whom Mr. Harper is now apparently seeking counsel.

November 30: Mr. Harper axes a further five climate change programs at Agriculture Canada, bizarrely asking the soon-to-be-redundant public servants to help with media spin control. Approximately 10 per cent of Canada's greenhouse gases come from agriculture.

January 17, 2007: A Radio-Canada investigation reveals that shortly after he was elected, Harpers’ government quietly met for two days in Houston Texas, with their US counterparts and oil industry executives. The apparent purpose of the meeting? Canada committing to a five-fold expansion in oil sands production in a “relatively short time span”.

A week later, George Bush makes his state of the union address, stating that the US is addicted to oil and that he wants to makes America’s dependence Middle Eastern oil “a thing of the past” - now a national security objective of the US government. Where will this missing production come from? Apparently from us. Thanks for letting us know Stephen.

The Alberta oil sands development is already the largest source of new greenhouse gases in Canada. So energy intensive is this bitumen boondoggle, it takes up to 1,500 cubic feet of clean natural gas to produce one barrel of dirty crude. The oil sands now consume 600 million cubic feet of natural gas per day – enough to heat 3.2 million Canadian homes.

According to the minutes of the Houston meeting, this massive increase in the oil sands production will mean Canada will have to “streamline” environmental regulations for new energy projects.

January 19, 2007: Harper announces his “new” green energy program, which appears to be a re-tread of a Liberal program cancelled by the Conservatives last year.

Reviews from the conservation community are less than stellar: “It is no more than a regurgitated Liberal plan with a few less bucks and one less year,” says Beatrice Olivastri, CEO, Friends of the Earth-Canada. “I am shocked and appalled that there is less on the table for renewable power production.”

January 21, 2007: The Conservatives announce a $300 million “EcoEnergy” program over four years to retrofit Canadian home to promote energy efficiency. This “new” program bears a striking resemblance to the old Energuide program axed by the Conservatives last April.

The significant difference is that the government will no longer fund expert audits for homeowners – perhaps because these highly qualified people have moved on to other work since the old program was abruptly cancelled by Harper last year.

This last point is important. Whipsawing public policy like this is not only shameless, it is highly inefficient as well. Environmental programs buried just last year are now being exhumed by Mr. Harper and propped up as “new” ideas - expect to see some spoilage and decay.

Politics is politics and Mr. Harper can be forgiven for trying to recast his government to more accurately reflect shifting public opinion. Indeed that is the whole point of a representative democracy such as ours.

However, as in the famous conversion of George Wallace to the civil rights movement, the public can also be forgiven for doubting his sincerity. Actions, as always, speak louder than words.

Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer living in Vancouver. This piece was published in the Tyee on Jan 24, 2007.

The Red Green Show

Stephane Dion’s surprising smackdown of the Liberal backroom boys was not just highly amusing, it may also signal a much-needed infusion of new blood into Canada's "natural governing party".

More importantly however, it showed that the old Liberal powerbrokers had grossly miscalculated the growing importance of the environment to Canadians as the defining issue of coming century.

As a longtime environmentalist, I can attest that the political machinery of all leading parties have never really treated this issue as anything more than a baby kissing photo op. Seeing Chrétien at the podium last weekend thundering about how he had championed Kyoto, while his government presided over a 25% increase in carbon emissions was a stomach-churning case in point.

However, the days when such empty rhetoric would pass public muster appear to have thankfully come to an end. An Environics poll this month showed that the environment is now second only to health care as the leading issue for Canadians. This rapid climb from public opinion obscurity has been astonishing.

In the 1990’s the environment as the leading issue to Canadians hovered around 5%. Even in the last election, only 4% of Canadians felt it was the most important issue. Five months ago, it had risen to 10%. Last month’s poll showed the environment was the leading issue for 13% of Canadians – ahead of the economy, the mission in Afghanistan or crime.

On climate change specifically, the numbers are even more compelling. In 1999, only 2% of Canadians polled thought global warming was the leading environmental problem facing the country. By 2004 that figure had risen to 4%. Last year it was 7%. By this year it had rocketed up to 20%.

This surge of support for a clean and healthy environment shows no signs of slowing and Mr.Dion shrewdly surfed this wave to victory past his party’s establishment, and the anointed frontrunners. His 53-page energy and climate platform clearly distinguished him from other candidates in the running, and struck a chord with younger delegates whose future hangs in the balance.

The sea change of public opinion is being driven by a realization by average Canadians of the enormous implications of global warming. This is a culmination of ever more stark scientific findings on what a climate altered Canada would mean for our children, as well as what Canadians are seeing already with their own eyes.

Vancouver just ended the largest boil water advisory in Canadian history as a result of record-breaking storms battering the BC coast. Recent research from the University of Washington shows that this type of “extreme” weather on Canada’s west coast will likely become the norm as a warmer North Pacific Ocean churns out more powerful and wetter winter storms.

Warming winters in BC have allowed an explosion in the mountain pine beetle population, which now affects an area of forest three times the size of Vancouver Island and is growing by 40% every year. By the time this epidemic has run it’s course it will have impacted 25,000 forest dependant families in 80 BC communities and obliterated $20 billion dollars in commercial timber.

Canadians are waking up to such challenges and are looking for leaders with vision and commitment that will lead our country into the new century. Mr. Dion appears to be such a man and his victory will provide Canadians a very clear choice in the next election.

For his part, Stephen Harper’s credibility on the climate file is only slightly more balmy than absolute zero. His much-hyped Clean Air Act was widely ridiculed as an empty ruse that would do nothing to cap carbon emissions until at least 2020.

Last April, Harper signaled his disdain for fighting global warming by abruptly canceling fifteen federal programs meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Last month he axed a further five related programs at Agriculture Canada, bizarrely asking the soon-to-be-redundant public servants to help with media spin control.

While Harper is no eco-hero, he is also a shrewd and capable politician. Can Dion beat him at the polls? Given that Dion has just vanquished the most seasoned political veterans in his own party, so far I am impressed.

If he does become Prime Minister it remains to be seen whether the Liberal party, which in the past has failed miserably to reduce carbon emissions, can be trusted to deliver on this critical issue.

However, Mr. Dion’s victory over not only his rivals but the party establishment means two things: Not only does he now hold the reins of power to begin to effect such changes, he will also face much less internal opposition from the hoary pragmatists in his party that have blocked such progress in the past.

Godspeed Mr. Dion. I might just vote for you.

Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer living in Vancouver. This piece ran nowhere.

Waterworld in Lotusland

Feeling wet? Get used to it.

The storms battering the B.C. coast this fall are a small taste of what our climate-altered future has in store for us. And although scientists have been steadily churning out increasingly troubling predictions about our changing climate, it seems that our development-minded politicians have had little time to read them.

This is leaving parts of the Lower Mainland woefully unprepared for the one-two punch of increasingly violent storms and rising sea levels.

A case in point: the city of Richmond and the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu both have an average elevation of only one perilous metre above sea level. Scientists are predicting eventual worldwide sea-level increases of more than seven metres. The government of Tuvalu is so alarmed by this that they have negotiated an arrangement with New Zealand to evacuate their entire population as their country disappears under the waves.

You certainly don’t hear about any plans to evacuate Richmond. In fact, nowhere in Richmond’s official community plan does the phrase "sea level" make an appearance.

The only reference to climate change is a commitment to “continue to monitor environmental trends and adjust city policies and programs as required”. This document was last amended in 1999.

However, there are signs that this elephant in the room is attracting some notice. A recent city-staff report to Richmond city council cited the need to amend Richmond’s flood-protection management strategy, which dates back to 1989.

The report appears to be the first effort to include climate change in city planning and assumes that sea levels will rise 35 centimetres by the next century. However, the authors also note that Canadian government researchers estimate that there is now a “high confidence” that the world’s oceans will rise by almost double that amount by 2100.

The challenge facing low-lying municipalities such as Richmond illustrates the implications of our changing climate and how many impacts will be felt very close to home.

In the past few years, climate scientists have drastically increased the predicted sea-level rises caused by climate change. Rising waters are due to both the thermal expansion of the world’s oceans as they warm and the release of massive amounts of water from melting ice sheets.

A recent NASA analysis of data from its GRACE satellite shows that Greenland’s ancient and massive frozen storehouse of water is pouring into the ocean faster than anyone anticipated, leading to predictions of an eventual long-term sea-level rise of almost seven metres from melting Greenland ice alone. Although it is highly unlikely that sea levels would rise that much in the near future, the long-term trend is very bad news for low-lying areas throughout the world, including Richmond.

So why haven’t these startling findings found their way into Richmond’s urban planning? One possible explanation is the blistering pace of growth in the city. Housing starts in the city increased by a record 40 percent between 2004 and 2005. The total value of building construction for permits issued in 2005 hit an unprecedented $499 million.

Richmond now has a population of more than 180,000, with a growth rate of four percent over the past two years. With that kind of increase, who wants to hear about a coming deluge?

If anyone is wondering, climate experts are clear on the local implications of rising sea levels. In a phone interview from Ottawa, James Bruce, a former Environment Canada scientist and expert on climate change, described Richmond as “a disaster waiting to happen…within 50 years, [rising sea levels in Richmond are] going to be a very significant problem.

“Our best estimates are that sea levels have been rising by about three centimetres in the last decade, and it seems to have accelerated in the last decade. That suggests that sea level might go up by somewhere between 20 and 40 centimetres by 2050.”

According to Bruce, even that projection may be overly optimistic. “Some people think that is a very conservative estimate and that the recent evidence of more rapid melting of the ice in Greenland, for example, suggests that we might well exceed those figures…”

It is important to remember that Richmond is not in the open ocean like Tuvalu and is not currently threatened by tropical cyclones. Low-lying areas such as Richmond are not one day simply under water due to rising oceans—the initial threat comes first from storm surges like the one that overtopped levees in New Orleans with tragic results. That makes increased storm activity and rising sea levels a deadly pairing, and something we should be keenly aware of here in B.C.

Last fall, about 200 waterfront homes in South Delta were damaged when a vicious storm breached the berm in front of the structures, causing more than $2 million in damage. The recent storms drenching the coast and flooding the Fraser Valley are a further sign of things to come.

A recent study out of the University of Washington shows that winter storms in the Pacific Northwest are predicted to dump 15 percent more precipitation on the B.C. coast by the end of the century.

“The atmosphere becomes more energetic because of climate change. It’s not just the temperature increase, but the increased temperature drives a more vigorous circulation,” Eric Salathé, a scientist with the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Oceans (which published the study last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters), stated in a release.

That is bad news for B.C., Salathé noted ominously: “Alaska will really get it—Alaska and the British Columbia coast.”

Bruce agreed. “Winter storm activity has been increasing in the northern hemisphere for the last 30 to 40 years. That means that you could get quite significant storm surges on top of that rising sea. The evidence is very strong that wave heights have risen significantly in the Pacific and the Atlantic as the climate was warmed in the last 40 years.”

Given all that, Bruce feels, “You have a scenario that could easily give you problems in Richmond fairly frequently by 2050.”

Is there anything from an engineering point of view that will solve this problem in the long term? “No,” said Hadi Dowlatabadi, a Vancouver-based Canada Research Chair in global change at UBC and an expert on the impacts of climate change. “Not really. Not forever—unless we stop climate change in its tracks.” He believes that in the long term, overreliance on engineering solutions such as sea walls can make the daunting situation like the one facing Richmond even worse.

“The problem is that the more we rely on sea walls, the more we will be under the illusion that we are safe. The safer we feel, the more we will invest in capital behind a wall that eventually will collapse just like in New Orleans…The [U.S.] Army Corps of Engineers, by building the levees, set New Orleans up for exactly the disaster that happened. It’s sad, but it’s predictable.”

Dowlatabadi said that the most effective strategy in the short term is to ensure protection from big storms, something that is already partly there in the form of Vancouver Island. “I can imagine highly valued areas and highly influential property owners requesting construction of ever more prominent sea walls…But these will get overwhelmed by sea-level rise and storms eventually.”

The Dutch are world experts at reclaiming land from the sea by building dikes and then farming below sea level. But in recent years, they are rethinking this expensive practice. “The Netherlands is actually allowing many of their sea walls to collapse because they are finding their continued maintenance costing too much compared to the income these generate,” Dowlatabadi said. “Even though Amsterdam [Schiphol] Airport is six metres below sea level, the Dutch are careful not to develop towns in areas of high risk.”

He also pointed out that we currently lack insurance mechanisms that reflect the true costs of increasing flood and storm damage due to climate change. Earlier this year, this led a number of insurance companies in the U.S. to cease offering insurance in areas that are prone to such risks because of large storms and hurricanes, from the Florida Keys to New York state’s Long Island.

“Our research shows that development strategy on the coast has a huge effect on the eventual cost of sea-level rise to the community. If you have a community that allows repeated repair of shoreline properties after each damaging event, the total repairs will grow to be much larger in value than the cost of abandoning the land earlier on,” Dowlatabadi said. “It is like having a clunker that you keep repairing instead of buying a newer, more reliable car.”

He noted that rising sea levels also raise an important issue related to social justice. “The poor are in the same pool of risk as the rich who are living on the waterfront, and the premiums the poorer households pay reflect repairs to the damages of the rich…It’s ridiculous. We need bands of insurance risk that are much more specific than the [projected] 50-year and 100-year floodplains. In Florida, super-expensive shorefront homes are no longer included in the insurance pool underwritten by private companies. We need to signal the magnitude of risk to residents of each area through higher insurance premiums and perhaps higher taxes where the city has undertaken risk-reduction measures such as sea walls. However, this is where reliance on simple market forces may not be enough, and urban planners should step in—and with growth plans that reflect long-term risks of earthquakes and floods.”

This point is particularly poignant in Richmond, where homeowners are not even able to buy flood insurance. The recent report to Richmond city council calls for flood covenants and indemnity clauses for all discretionary development. This indicates that although development is not yet being discouraged, the city—like insurance companies—does not want to be held responsible if things get wet.

According to the staff report, Richmond currently has a perimeter dike system “designed to withstand a 1-in-200-year flood event [that] has been constructed around Lulu Island, protecting most of Richmond from all but extraordinary flooding”. This dike system is designed to be two feet higher than the highest water level ever recorded—in 1894.

The problem is that sea levels have already risen by 20 centimetres since then. Making matters worse, the entire Fraser River delta is sinking at a rate of one millimetre per year due to the accumulated weight of fresh sediments being dropped by the river. Given the situation facing areas such as Richmond, one would think it would be wise to direct population growth to areas less at risk from rising oceans. Is this happening?

“No, the opposite is happening,” said Tom Lancaster, Vancouver manager of advisory services for Smart Growth B.C. “We are seeing Richmond emerge as one of the new regional growth centres, which it wasn’t designated as in the [GVRD’s] Livable Region Strategic Plan [LRSP].”

The LRSP is supposed to direct where population growth takes place in the Lower Mainland, but proposed revisions have proven so contentious it hasn’t been updated since being written in 1996. One of the things the plan has not done is stop the expansion of Richmond as a growth centre.

According to Lancaster, “From the regional-planning perspective, the tail seems to be wagging the dog. The growth taking place in Richmond will probably force the GVRD to write Richmond into the next iteration of the LRSP as a regional growth centre.”

Richmond was never supposed to be a growth centre because of the enormous risk posed by areas with soils that will liquefy in the inevitable event of a large earthquake. Rising sea levels are just the latest reason to avoid densification there.

Lancaster also added that the $2-billion Canada line will not help. “A lot of that growth is being facilitated by the emergence of a new rapid-transit line connecting Vancouver with Richmond. In the context of risk-mitigation from rising sea levels, it’s one of the silliest things we could do.”

Why is regional planning not taking into account such an important issue? Lancaster offered these thoughts: “Planning in B.C. is limited by politics. Politicians don’t tend to want to work together for long-term goals. If they can be seen to be bringing in money to their municipality by doing development in places where development hasn’t happened before, they are dumping money into the coffers of their municipalities. Property developers don’t tend to look at long-term risks because once you develop a property and sell it, typically you walk away…From the paradigm of the development industry, there’s absolutely no point in looking at rising sea levels and the effect on properties that are being developed right now.”

Politicians have so far had the luxury of treating the enormous implications of climate change as mere hypotheticals that some future government would have to deal with. Much precious time has been wasted. Our changing climate is coming home to roost—whether we are ready or not. This will require fundamental changes in how we live and how we plan communities, not just in places like Tuvalu and Bangladesh but here in B.C.

The sooner we get on with that important work, the better.

Because it is going to get wet.

Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer based in Vancouver. This was published in the Georgia Straight on November 23, 2006.

Bad Climate Theatre

Is it just me or are international climate conferences looking more and more like lousy theatre? Predictable plots, rigid scripting, boring outcomes - its all there. The latest outing in Nairobi was no exception - here's my review of this stinker:

The award for worst acting in a minor role must surely go to Canada's own Rona Ambrose. With so many political posers from around the world, the competition for this ignoble honour was certainly stiff. However, the pained attempts to deliver her lines with sincerity were excruciating for everyone, especially the audience. How about this for awful dialogue: “We are on track to meet all of our obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, but not the targets.”

Good absurdist comedy - or surrealism perhaps - but clearly not what the crowd was looking for. “What kind of misleading nonsense is this?" howled Steven Guilbeault, the climate critic from Greenpeace. "Completely idiotic” panned Liberal MP John Godfrey.

Admittedly, it was the rigid and wooden direction by Stephen Harper that was the real showstopper. Without any flexibility for improvisation, both the audience and the players may as well have gone home early.

Secretary General Kofi Annan who opened the event was the latest in a Greek chorus of world leaders to name climate change a leading threat to the future of humanity. This made the milquetoast commitment as the curtain came down - largely to hold more meetings - even more disappointing.

Then there was the backdrop that made this predictable set piece such an exploration in rich irony. The unfolding tragedy of global warming is very real and the victims with the best seats in the house will be impoverished Africans.

However, the world’s wealthy nations seemed to do little more than fill the luxury hotels of Nairobi for two weeks accomplishing almost nothing on a global emergency created largely by the western lifestyle that will disproportionately devastate the world’s poorest continent.

Fourteen countries in Africa already endure devastating water shortages. This number is expected to increase to twenty-five by 2030. Recent research shows that global warming will reduce overall rainfall in southern Africa 10% by 2050.

Small-scale farming produces most of the food in Africa. It also provides employment for 70% of the working people. Global climate change will dangerously undermine the ability of Africans to feed and support themselves by making these droughts far more likely. The last major drought in southern Africa in 2002 left over 14 million people in need of direct food aid.

It is also no small irony that human induced climate change is as much of an imposition on the developing world as the economic policies of the World Bank and the IMF.

The average American produces sixty five times as much carbon dioxide per capita as someone who lives in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, between 1980 and 2001, Africa was one of very few areas of the world to experience a decline in per capita carbon dioxide emissions – not because of conservation efforts but due to increasing poverty.

The world’s climate scientists are telling us that our choices in the next five years will determine nothing less than the fate of the planet – melodramatic I know, but the truth nonetheless. The script for a climate-altered Africa reads as a far greater tragedy than the present.

One would think that with that much at stake we would be treated to little more drama when the world’s leaders gather to supposedly hammer out a solution. The problem is that all the meetings to date have seemed hollow rehearsals for the day when we actually chose to take this issue seriously rather than just go through the motions. If the actors don’t care then why should the audience?

I don’t have high hopes that when the curtain rises on the next climate conference in 2008 the show will be any more compelling. There is no doubt however that these wooden productions will one day be replaced with genuine desire for action - forced on us through the imperatives of an increasingly violent and unpredictable climate. The question is: how much precious time will be wasted in the interim?

I dearly wish international climate conferences were just lousy theatre - then we would only be out of pocket about two hours and $20. As it is, the real cost of such failed and boring productions is quite a bit more.

Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer living in Vancouver. This piece ran nowhere.

Our Fishless Future

Tuna, Salmon, Cod. Imagine trying to explain to your grandchildren what they tasted like. This grim scenario was laid out last week in a groundbreaking study published in the world’s most prestigious research journal, Science.

Dr. Boris Worm from Dalhousie University led the investigation, which predicts a near complete collapse of ocean ecosystems by 2048. While the scale of this catastrophe seems right out of science fiction, the implications are very real.

Scientists looked at records around the world and throughout history to get a picture of where the world’s fish stocks have been and where they are going. The projected line of steady decline hits bottom at 2048, the year Dr. Worm predicts the world’s oceans will largely be populated only by toxic algae.

This apocalyptic future is the twin prodigy of ever more efficient fishing technology, coupled with incompetent and shortsighted government policy. Far from leading the world in solving this problem, Canada is one of the worst offenders and our story is a telling study on how the world ended up in this mess.

For years, Ottawa has consistently opposed restrictions on the use of dragger technology, a widely used fishing method that is so wasteful and destructive that our fishless descendants may well marvel at our collective stupidity.

Dragger boats do exactly that, dragging a net weighing several thousand pounds across the ocean floor, with predictable and devastating impacts on sensitive bottom habitat. The net can be large enough to swallow a 747, and anything swept up by this maw is long dead by the time it is hauled up on deck.

“By-catch” is the quaint euphemism used by both industry and government to describe the enormous volumes of unwanted marine life dumped overboard, which can make up over 90% of the catch. It is akin to picking apples by first cutting down the tree.

Ottawa recently joined our traditional fishing foes, Spain and Iceland, to block a proposed international moratorium on draggers on the high seas. Canadian fishermen do almost no dragging in international waters, so why would our government collude with countries we have in the past called “fish pirates” in blocking the protection of international fish stocks? Even George Bush supports this UN sponsored effort.

Documents obtained through access to information reveal that Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is apparently worried that such a prohibition might undermine their ability to allow the continued scouring of the ocean floor within Canadian waters.

This latest incident illustrates a culture of incompetence within DFO that almost defies comprehension. Having presided over the obliteration of our once-legendary cod stocks, this moribund department then allowed west coast salmon stocks to be fished close to extinction.

The response to this self-created problem was to create yet another, when it became department policy to aggressively promote net-pen aquaculture, now implicated in the massive infection of wild fish with parasites from these so-called “salmon farms”.

The case study of a wealthy, developed country such as Canada destroying our own fisheries resources through shortsighted motives and sheer stupidity has been repeated around the world. Fishing in international waters, where virtually no laws apply or are enforced, poses an even more daunting challenge.

The challenge now facing the world is essentially one of morality. This is the first time in history that we have the ability to catch virtually every fish in the ocean. Because we can, does that mean we will? It seems that morality has become essential not only for our own survival, but for the survival of most other life now sharing the planet with its new childish gods.

While time is short to save the world’s oceans, there is much we can do - if that is our choice.

Marine protected areas that are off-limits to commercial fishing have been shown to be highly effective at restoring ecosystems and repopulating adjacent areas.

Selective commercial fishing methods that do not destroy bottom habitat are not only less wasteful, but produce higher quality fish and provide more employment than dragger boats.

Certain forms of aquaculture such as catfish, trout and shellfish are not dependent on fishmeal as food, and can buy us some time to restore global ocean ecosystems.

Lastly, we need bold and principled leadership, starting at home. Incredibly, some of the same DFO bureaucrats that presided over the collapse of the cod are not only still in positions of power, they have since been promoted. This department is long overdue for a complete overhaul and many of these individuals should quite simply be fired – if not frogmarched to the curb. There is no time to waste being polite.

The scientists at Dalhousie deserve our gratitude for so clearly and convincingly showing where past and present practices are leading us. Let us hope we have the courage to change that path before it is too late.

Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer living in Vancouver. This piece ran nowhere.

Made in Canada Sellout

Ever wonder why the Canadian government keeps saying it's impossible to meet our international commitments to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto accord?

The truth is Canada’s ability to comply with Kyoto was quietly killed on December 18, 2002 - just one day after our ratification papers for the global climate treaty were proudly presented to the United Nations.

This shocking betrayal came in the form of a personal letter from then Minister of Natural Resources Herb Dhaliwal to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. It guaranteed such sweeping concessions to the oil and gas sector that complying with Kyoto was virtually impossible without shutting down large sectors of the rest of the economy.

Among other things, Ottawa committed to the fossil fuel sector that they would “set emission intensity targets for the oil and gas sector at no more than 15% below the projected business-as-usual levels for 2010.”

Industrial emitters like the oil sector account for over 50% of all greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. This quiet corporate give-away meant that the rest of the Canadian economy, namely you and me, would have to cut our emissions by more 40% - assuming we want to comply with international law.

Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry has cheerfully increased their emissions by 47% since 1990, and they are set to double again in the next decade.

But wait, there's more. This letter also committed that the oil industry would pay no more than $15/tonne for greenhouse gas offsets until 2012. What a bargain! A study conducted for the National Climate Change Process estimated the true costs of such offsets are more like $250/tonne.

Given these sweeping concessions to the fossil fuel lobby, complying with Kyoto is now virtually impossible. For instance, we could shut down the entire transportation sector in Canada (a mere 25% of all emissions) and still not meet our Kyoto commitments.

This also creates the convenient situation where those pundits who appose any meaningful movement on climate policy can crow that Kyoto is not doable and never was.

Realistically, the likelihood of Stephen Harper, an Alberta Tory, reneging on this remarkable sellout to the oil industry is vanishingly small. The reason this deal was was so crucial to the oil sector is because the Alberta oil sands development produces such astronomical carbon emissions.

So energy intensive is this bitumen boondoggle, it takes up to 1,500 cubic feet of clean natural gas to produce one barrel of dirty crude. The oil sands now consume 600 million cubic feet of natural gas per day – enough to heat 3.2 million Canadian homes.

The gluttonous appetite of the tar sands for dwindling natural gas supplies is expected to more than triple by 2012. Hence the need for the proposed 1,200 km Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline from the Artic Ocean to Fort McMurray, at a cost of $7.5 billion.

Besides the fact that this outrageously inefficient project creates three times the carbon emissions of conventional oil development, why would it even make economic sense to convert our finite deposits of natural gas into oil? From an energy efficiency point of view, we are turning caviar into Kraft dinner.

The simple answer is that China needs oil to fuel their ballooning love affair with the automobile. There is only so much oil in the world and politicians are falling all over themselves to sell it, even as they publicly spout platitudes about climate change.

``So when Harper rolls out his “Made in Canada” strategy, don’t expect much. We will likely see the usual tough talk minus any deadlines. More cynically, the government spin-doctors will also attempt to deflect attention away from inaction on climate change by talking instead about smog.

This hoary tactic of attempting to confuse the public by talking about smog and greenhouse gases interchangeably is typically reserved for only the most desperate PR situations. That time is now.

If there is a bright side, it’s that this is what early childhood educators would call “a learning moment”. The planet’s life support systems do not fail all at once, or even gradually over time. Our environment is degraded incrementally – bad decision by bad decision. It is important to take note of such milestones. This one happens to be a doosey.

In their pedantic and qualified way, the world’s leading scientists are telling us that climate change is the nothing short of a hair-on-fire planetary emergency. The most recent study was presented last week by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, showing the Earth has not been this warm in the last 12,000 years.

"If further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about 3 million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today," Hansen said.

Assuming we want to avoid that outcome, there are some practical options. While the Canadian oil and gas lobby has been spectacularly successful at bullying our government, their counterparts elsewhere in the world have taken a very different tack.

For instance, British Petroleum in the UK committed in 1998 to reducing greenhouse gas emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2010 – a target they reached in 2003, seven years ahead of schedule. Thirteen major UK companies including PB and Shell also penned an open letter to Tony Blair urging clear and strong regulation of greenhouse gases, and a long term plan that would further reduce emissions by 60% below 1990 levels by 2050.

Another case in point is California, with a population similar to Canada. Many of us cringed when the “Terminator” became Governor, but Schwarzenegger last month signed a landmark deal that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020, making California the first US state to legislate a cap on emissions.

Regulation of greenhouse gases will come sooner or later, whether industry likes it or not. Business leaders in other countries have taken the long view that it is better to volunteer than be drafted. Governments elsewhere have provided clear goalposts to those industries and got on with the business of governing.

Ottawa can step back from our emerging image as a global climate pariah, and take a leadership role on creating a sustainable future. However, the first step must be to tear up the sweetheart deal with the oil industry.

Mitchell Anderosn is a freelance writer living in Vancouver. A related piece ran on the Tyee on October 4, 2006

The Satellite that Could Save the World

At a time when the Earth’s climate is at the top of practically every nation’s agenda, it might seem perplexing that there’s a $100-million, fully-completed climate-sensing spacecraft languishing in a warehouse in Maryland.

The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) was supposed to be delivered five years ago to the L1 Lagrangian point—a gravity-neutral parking spot between the Earth and the Sun 1.5 million kilometers away that affords a continuous, sunlit view of the planet.

From that lofty vantage, DSCOVR would beam back our first-ever measurements of the entire planet’s energy balance and reflectivity, known as albedo. This is critical data for calibrating climate change models and monitoring the progress of global warming. Yet the mission was quietly killed this year, so the satellite remains sitting in a box at Goddard Space Flight Center.

Could the decision to kill DSCOVR have anything to do with the politics of climate science? For years, Republicans have claimed the need for more data before acting to curb global warming. A letter President Bush wrote to four Republican senators in March 2001 (after DSCOVR’s endorsement by a National Academy of Sciences review panel) referred to “the incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change.”

More recently, in a 2005 briefing, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan asserted that “there is still a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the science of climate change.” Dr. Kevin Trenberth, Head of the Climate Analysis Section at National Center for Atmospheric Research, said, “It is as if the administration prefers to continue to hide behind lack of definitive data as an
excuse for lack of action and leadership.”

According to Dr. Jonah Colman, who does climate modeling at Los Alamos National Laboratory, “the availability of DSCOVR for inter-comparison between other measurements” would reconcile discrepancies in data from low-earth orbit satellites. “Albedo is incredibly important,” he added. “It can change quickly, and we currently do not have a direct method for measuring it. DSCOVR would have given us that.”

Project leader Dr. Francisco P. J. Valero, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, describes the mission as “an urgent necessity.” Dr. Robert L. Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, is even more blunt about the importance of DSCOVR’s data: “Not knowing may kill us.”

If we’re interested in understanding how climate changes and how to predict what’s going to happen next, DSCOVR would appear to be a crucial undertaking. So what happened? The loss of the Columbia shuttle certainly didn’t help, but the real killer of this project seems to have been partisan politics.

Back in 1998, Al Gore championed a probe that would broadcast real-time images of Earth to the Internet at the relatively cheap cost of $20 million. Named Triana (after the sailor on Columbus’ voyage who first spotted the New World), Gore hoped the probe would foster greater awareness of the fragility of the planet. The idea had come to him in a dream.

After peer review, the mission was upgraded to allow the spacecraft to continuously monitor the energy budget of the entire planet—the first one ever with this capability—making it a much more credible mission The name was later changed from Triana to DSCOVR—likely in the hope of jettisoning the Gore-dream political baggage.

Republicans didn’t buy it. In 1999, GOP Congressmen put the project on ice, dubbing it the “Goresat,” a “multimillion-dollar screen saver.” Dick Armey, then House Majority Leader quipped, “This idea supposedly came from a dream. Well, I once dreamed I caught a 10-foot bass. But I didn’t call up the Fish and Wildlife service and ask them to spend $30 million to make sure it happened.”

Lost in the partisan grandstanding was the critically important science behind DSCOVR. In January 2006, NASA quietly canceled DSCOVR altogether, citing “competing priorities.”

Many in the scientific community are incredulous that such an important mission might be lost to rank partisanship. “Gore favored it,” says Dr. Park. “This administration is determined that a Gore experiment is not going to happen. It’s inconceivable to me.” The director of public information for the American Physical Society, Dr. Park says, “I probably talk to more physicists than anyone else in the country. They all think this is tragic.” Climate analyst Trenbeth said, “It makes no sense to me at all either from an economic or a scientific viewpoint. That leaves politics.”

The Ukrainian government offered to launch DSCOVR free of charge aboard a Tsyklon II rocket, the most reliable launch vehicle in the world. France made a similar offer using one of its rockets. But NASA’s response so far has been “no thanks.” Not helping matters, Congress recently raided the NASA budget to the tune of $568.5 million for 198 non-peer reviewed “Congressional interest items”—otherwise known as pure political pork.

DSCOVR is not entirely dead yet. The NOAA is considering bankrolling the launch because DSCOVR could better warn of solar storms, protecting expensive communications satellites. Until then, assuming it’s not stripped for parts, DSCOVR will remain in a box at Goddard until a change in the political winds sends it to its rightful place at L1.

Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer based in Vancouver. This piece ran in the August/September issue of SEED Magazine.