Comparing the BC Liberals and the NDP respective records on climate change presents stark contrast to the recent rhetoric from NDP Leader Carole James.

Climate-change finger pointing reeks of hypocrisy

Michael Smyth, The Province
Sunday, January 21, 2007

When NDP Leader Carole James displayed a chart last week showing the shameful growth of greenhouse-gas emissions in British Columbia, the graph curiously only went back as far as the year 2001.

That's the year the Liberals took power in B.C., of course, and James blasted Premier Gordon Campbell for allowing greenhouse-gas emissions to increase by a shameful five per cent over that period.

For that, said James, Campbell gets a big, fat F on his environmental report card.

But why didn't the chart extend back further in time to 1991, the year the NDP came to power?

Perhaps the environmentally sensitive James, friend of trees everywhere, didn't want to waste any more paper on a longer graph. Or was it because greenhouse-gas emissions went up 24 per cent while the NDP was in office?

I suspect the latter explanation. After all, giving her own party an F-minus would have been a tad embarrassing.

The NDP record notwithstanding, James still went on to blame this winter's freak storms and the pine-beetle epidemic ravaging our forests on the Liberals' greenhouse gases.

But -- if we assume these events were caused by human-triggered climate change in the first place -- shouldn't the New Democrats take most of the blame for the destruction? They pumped nearly 400 per cent more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the Libs!

That's actually pretty amazing when you think back to the sputtering economy of the 1990s. Greenhouse-gas production is usually associated with intensive economic and industrial activity. Despite the limp economy under the New Democrats, they still managed to clog up the atmosphere with all those nasty, insulating gases.

That said, I won't pass retroactive judgment on the NDP the way James wants to judge the Liberals now.

Climate change was not on the political radar screen when the NDP was in power. And many New Democrats were understandably resistant to environmental demands that were going to hurt our economy. (Remember how Glen Clark called the environmentalists "enemies of B.C.?")

But what does drive me nuts is the blatant hypocrisy and how the debate over climate change and environmental policy has become so politically partisan.

Consider the issue of new energy production. Everyone agrees a critical component in reducing greenhouse gases is the development of zero-emission energy sources.

But the New Democrats, and the environmental movement generally, will still oppose clean projects like the proposed Ashlu Creek hydro station near Squamish because they're being built by the private sector.

It's the same hypocritical story federally, where Liberal Leader Stephane Dion can summon the nerve to trash the governing Conservatives on climate change when greenhouse-gas emissions went up 24 per cent (sound familiar?) while he was the federal environment minister.

As deposed political parties attempt to bury their own sorry records on climate change, the ones in power have figured out that duplicating their failures would be courting disaster with voters.

That's why the federal Tories are on an environmental spending spree.

And it's why I think you'll see the Campbell government change its tune on plans for two coal-burning power plants: They'll either cancel the plants outright or (more likely) announce they'll be fitted with cutting-edge technology such as a "carbon capture and storage" to dramatically cut emissions.

All while their opponents claim they can do better, even though they did so much worse for so long.