Oil: The Cause Of, And Solution To, All of Society's Problems

A National Post writer gives readers a lesson in circular logic.

Climate change activists are frequently compared to religious zealots for their irrational dedication to the cause, so it’s rather remarkable to read this piece in the Ottawa Citizen by the leader of the United Church of Canada Mardi Tindal, who is both a climate change activist and a religious zealot, yet comes across as rather rational. “The accuracy of various future scenarios can be disputed,” she writes, “but there is no longer any serious question that significant [climate] change is accelerating.” Given this reality, Tindal says Stephen Harper’s unwillingness to take constructive steps at the Cancun conference and his decision to let the Senate kill the Climate Change Accountability Act amount to a failure in his duty to the truth, to his people, and to the future. It’s not an argument you have to agree with, but it’s not one you can dismiss as hysterical either.

The National Post’s Tasha Kheiriddin celebrates Cancun’s failure as the best thing for the fight against climate change, warning that “Curbing economic growth [by capping carbon emissions] … would mean less capital for the long-term solution to reducing emissions: investment in sustainable energy initiatives. It would also mean less revenue for governments to protect their countries against the potential effects of rising temperatures, such as flooding.” In other words, our current dirty economy is both the cause of, and solution to, climate change. Wait, what? That makes no sense.

Equally irrational is this editorial in the Montreal Gazette, which argues, “If in fact the successes [from Cancun] are modest, there were advances, and enough of them to salvage the climate-talks process.” The main success the Gazette points to? A commitment to provide $100 billion to developing countries to offset the effects of climate change, funding that will come from an unspecified “wide variety of sources.” If only governments worked this way:

Jim Flaherty: “Mr. Speaker, I’m pleased to announce a $6-trillion surplus in the 2011 budget.”

Speaker: “My word, where did this surplus come from?”

Flaherty: “An unspecified wide variety of sources, Mr. Speaker.”

Speaker: “Excellent. I hereby declare this budget a success. Who wants a drink?”