4 - Wednesday, August 31, "e - — Shore News

Duplicity on the war!

Bob
Hunter

STRICT LY PERSONAL

TO CONTINUE with our
tale about how federal
Environment Mizster Sheila
Copps cops out, let me reit-
erate the unpleasant fact
that the world’s leading cli-
matologists have warned
that we are well down the
slippery slope toward a dras-
tic and irreversible planet-
wide change in temperature.

Iv is no longer a question of “if”
as scientists who gathered last
week in Geneva stated again and
again. It is a question of “when.”
The gathering in Switzerland, the
10th session of the
Intergovernmental Negotiating
Committee on Climate Change
(INC10), was called in an attempt
to achieve a binding protocot to cut
greenhouse gas emissions by 20%
as a minimum.

This is an essential step toward
cutting global carbon dioxide tev-
els, to be followed by a crucial
Climate Summit next March in
Berlin.

Ironically. the original agree-
ment by most of the industrialized
countries to make the effort grew
out of the recommendation of the
World Conference on Changing’
Atmosphere held in Toronto in
1988, known everywhere (outside
of Canada) as the “Toronto
Target.”

Tronic, because Canada itself did
not agree to adopt the iarget as a
government goal until last year,
and, as yet, has failed to come up
with a plan showing how it will
accomplish the necessary cuts in
carbon dioxide emissions.

There is a reason for the failure,
and the reason is Sheila Copps.
who, as federal Environment
Minister, has abdicated her respon-
sibilities on a scale that will be
viewed by future historians us
appalling. With the crunch upon us,
Sheila is letting a handful of
bureaucrats set the course, and the
course they are following is to do
absolutely nothing,

As you probably know, the
United States, which produces a
quarier of the world’s pollutants,
did not sign the agreement cobbled
together at the Earth Summit in Rio

de Janeiro to start cutting back on
greenhouse gases.

In its crude way (pun intended),
the American decision was only to
be expected. George Bush was
president at the time, and he repre-
sented the oil interests in Texas, as
the Gulf War so blatantly demon-
strated,

It should be noted that, just in
case Bush got confused, and forgot
his roots, the so-called Global
Climate Coalition, an unholy
alliance of big oil companies and
coal-fired electric utilities in the
U.S., lobbied furiously to make
sure that the Land of the Free and
the Brave kept its pollution levels
up.

Why Canada dragged its heels
for so long is easily explained in a
single word: Mulroney. In his usual
lapdog fashion, he did whatever
George Bush told him to do.
Period.

The Liberals, it was desperately
hoped, would face up to the chal-
lenge, which, in the long run, is
infinitely more important to the
well-being of future generations of
Canadians than any minor turf
squabble such as Quebec. Canada,
as the newest studies show, is prob-
ably in deeper trouble once global
warming really kicks in than any
other country in the world.

But so far the Grits have been
an unmitigated disaster, Copps has
refused to come to terms with the
fact that we have to bite the bullet.
As Greenpeuace’s climate cam-
paigner Kevin Jardine puts it, “If
we don't do anything to stop our *
fossil fuel consumption by the year

2030, we will have committed the
globe to irreversible climate
change.

“After that, there’s nothing the
world can do but be hit by change
after change after change because
we'll have already poured the car-
bon dioxide into the atmosphere,
and we won't be atle to pull it back
again.”

Ms. Copps can say. “That's
after my term of office” but she
will go down in history as yet
another do-nothing Environment
Minister who failed to perform her
clear duty.

One of her predecessors, the
political turncoat Lucien Bouchard.
made the magnanimous gesture of
committing Canada to the agrec-
ment to reduce emissions, but did
so without consulting anybody,
which drove the provinces as well
as the oil electric industries up the
wall. Their lobbyists swarmed
Ottawa.

The upshot. fairly predictable,
was that the Tories simply sat on
the issue. They didn’t even bother
lo set up a process to set up a plan,
Jet alone initiate any serious stud-
ies.

Having signed the Climate
Convention, however, Canada was
now obliged to file its first commu-
nication reporting on its steps so far
by Sept. 21, 1994, six months after
the Climate Convention became
international! law, which was, in
turn, six months after eriough
nations had ratified the agreement.

The watershed wis rea ‘ached i in
March 1993. Shortly before being
swept from office, the Tories, real-

izing they were ina bind, sel up the
Climate Change Task Group, a
multi-stakeholder federal-provin-
cial committee (Canadian or what,
ch?), which was supposed to advise
the government.

As it évolved, it had {2 seats:
four seals for non-governmental
organizations, four seats for energy
producers and four seats for cnergy
consumers, plus anybody else from
the federal or provincial bureaucra-
cies who wanted to attend the
meetings.

What this meant was that when
the task force sat down to begin
arm-wrestling, it was the non-gov-
ermment eco-types versus the
Canadian Association of Petroleum
Producers and their allies, the
Canadian Petroleum Products
Institute.

The institute includes all the big
oil and gas companies actually

ing front

doing the drilling in Alberta and
B.C., plus the network of gasoline
stations, who generally speak with
one voice and in many cases are the
same company, as, for instance,
Exxon, and, just for good measure,
the Canadian Electrical
Association. The association runs
all the coal-fired power stations,
whose members have built seven
new facilities since 1988, the year
the warning went out about global
warming.

So that’s how the deck was
stacked. The task force was, and
is, chaired by Suc Kirby, a senior
bureaucrat from Natural Resources
Canada, whose marching orders, it
soon became clear, were to do
absolutely nothing. Her mission: to
make sure that if, somehow, a plan
came out of this unworkable __
process, it was a do-nothing plan.

Stay tuned. The plot thickens.

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Transit Service Updates

Effective September 5, 1994 for
North & West Vancouver

With Fall approaching, BC Transit will be making seasonal service adjustments

to meet your increased travel needs if you live on the North Shore. Highlights
include the reinstatement of regular service to UBC and SFU.
Here are the changes you can look forward to:

SEABUS

Midday service on Sundays and holidays

returns to every 30 minutes.
L#214 Blucridge/
Phibbs Exchange/
Vancouver
7:30 a.m. trip from Sechelt at Hyannis
will resume service to downtown
Vancouver.
L#226 St. Patricks/Lonsdale Quay
Service will operate regular Winter
hours, with an additional trip at 9:00
am. Service will now alsa operate on
Sundays and holidays.
L#230 Upper Lonsdale/
Lonsdale Quay
Additional summer Sunday and holiday
service operating between Lonsdale &
23rd Street will be discontinued.

1.#236 Pemberton Heights/
Grouse Mountain/
Lonsdale Quay
Service will opérate hourly to Grouse
Mun, Service to the W.E. Lucus Centre
will resume for the Fall.
#241 Vancouver/Upper Lonsdale
Trip leaving Prospect at Rockland at
7:28 a.m, will resume.
#258 West Vancouver/UBC
#286 North Vancouver/UBC
Peak period service to UBC will resume
with the start of Fall classes.
#288) =SFU/Capilano College
Peak period service will resume with the
start of Fall classes.

Attention UBC & SFU students:
For more details on university services,

pick up a copy of your campus newspa-
per in early September.

For more details on ail of our Fall

service changes:

* Pick up a copy of the August 26 issue
of The Buzzer.
Pick up new timetables at your
public library, city or municipal hall,
chamber of commerce or Tourist
Travel InfoCentre.
Call our Customer Information staff
at 261-5100.

For pre-recorded information about

using the transit system:

« Call Talking Yellow Pages at
299-9000, extension 2233.

BC Transit fd verre