Come now Al, Tell Us How You Really Feel
Al Gore is up in Canada promoting his film about… global warming. Oddly enough, the conservative government just released a plan on how they are going to address global climate change and totally fail to meet their Kyoto treaty obligations. So, he thought he ought to voice his opinion. I think he doesn’t like it much. ;-)
I gotta say, the weirdest thing for me about visiting Canada was just how different the whole debate about the environment is outside of the US. The facts on the ground are different, the priority is different, the news is different, etc. It is a testament to the power of whoever influences the debate in the US that the story can be so different.
To understand just how different the context is, think about all that Canada has in common with the US: Canada has soldiers deployed overseas largely in response to 9/11 (Canadian forces are in Afghanistan, US is sadly primarily focused on Iraq), concerns about globalization and the impact of that on the economy and the job market, you’ve got debates about diversity and minorities, government scandal, etc.
Despite all this, in Canada the top political issue, and the one that put the current government in jeopardy almost as quickly as they took office, is the environment, with global climate change being the focus of discussion. The debate isn’t whether “it is real” or whether we should do anything about it, the debate is about what is “enough”. Seriously.