Harper's Mini Throne Speech

For the complete news article: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070205/harper_speech_070206/20070206?hub=TopStories

In what is being called his "mini throne speech" Harper has promised to cap total emissions.

This is a huge reversal of previous policy, and it is a very bad decision. Is climate change a reality? Yes. Is it in part human caused? Yes. There is no reason to try and cap emissions immediately though. We should be focusing our emission reduction efforts on using best practices such that emissions per barrel of oil produced, or emissions per kilowatt hour of electricity produced are minimal. We should not however, effectively cap the total production of oil or electricity to cut emissions.

If the Government wants to further cut emissions they should turn to individuals to cut consumption rather than punishing the resource industries that are fuelling the Canada economy (literally). The best way to get citizens to cut consumption is through tax incentives for reducing consumption or for buying energy efficient appliances. On the transportation side implementing more car pool lanes, making public transit a more viable option by increasing it's efficiency or what about a tax credit for buying low-emission vehicles? These are all far better options than potentially stagnating the economy by capping total industrial emissions produced by the very industries that are providing the only economic growth.

I have worked on the two previous Conservative campaigns and will do so in the soon to be upcoming one, but this is one area that I have to disagree with Harper on. That said, the Liberals under the insufferable Stephane Dione still hawking the horrid Kyoto Protocol. It is almost unbelievable that anyone still thinks that Kyoto is a viable plan to tackle green house gas emissions. Or actually that the Kyoto Protocol is about tackling green house gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol was all about Canada getting screwed in negotiations and still going along with a Euro-centric international agreement designed to look like France and Germany were getting tough on the environment. Reality check; for Canada Kyoto means donating 9 billion a year to the Russians. Thanks, but no thanks Dion. Let's keep that money in Canada and tackle the problem domestically.

The rest of the "mini throne" speech went better however with Harper reiterating common sense policies to democratize the presently useless Senate, a more assertive foreign policy, addressing the fiscal imbalance and more open federalism. Still this environment gambit looks ill advised and will in my opinion do little to sway "green" voters to the Conservative Party.