To the Editor:
It seems like bad news that Canada's newly minted Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq has little training or experience in environmental matters. How can she be anything but a puppet for Environment Canada bureaucrats if she has practically no background in the field?
But if the Harper government play their cards right, they can take advantage of Aglukkaq's lack of experience to make significant strides towards helping end the multi-billion dollar climate scare.
Here's how.
Every new minister, especially those with little background in their portfolio, is granted a honeymoon period of a month or two. Once the honeymoon ends, ministers are expected to toe the politically correct line or suffer the consequences.
Environment Canada (EC) is an extreme example where well-entrenched bureaucrats quickly whip new ministers into shape. While they may be strong, independent thinkers to start off, it is not long before each environment minister becomes a clone of their predecessors. This is one of the reasons the scare has continued so long.
Aglukkaq can help dampen public concerns about man-made climate change, something many in the Conservative party, the Prime Minister included, know is overblown, by doing one simple thing. She can order open, unbiased climate science hearings inviting testimony from reputable non-governmental experts from all sides of the debate.
Climate campaigners such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace will respond by condemning Aglukkaq as a 'climate change denier', a charge that apparently frightens strategists in the Prime Minister's Office. But they need not be so afraid. An honest broker response from the new minister can be written by even the most junior communications staffer:
"I have a responsibility to the people of Canada to quickly get up to speed on this complex and important topic," Aglukkaq could say. "The best way to do this is to hear from well-qualified experts from all reputable points of view. My experience with polar bear issues showed me that environmental activists are sometimes seriously wrong and so we need to carefully consider what true experts in the field have concluded."
Aglukkaq must order climate science hearings soon, however. Two months from now, she will have been so inundated with EC propaganda that she will probably come to actually believe that, to quote Al Gore, "the science is settled" and hearings are unnecessary.
The new minister should specifically ask experts questions her predecessors dared not. Aglukkaq could start by focusing on an issue she is already knows about - polar bears.
She should ask experts how polar bears, which DNA evidence indicates emerged bet-ween 110,000 and 130,000 years ago, could be threatened by conditions forecast for the 21st century, when they obviously survived even warmer periods 6000 - 7000 years ago. She could ask experts why polar bear populations are larger now than 50 years ago, citing evidence of increasing numbers from Inuit elders and Nunavut's director of wildlife management, Drikus Gissing, who last year asserted, "the bear population is not in crisis as people believed."
Before first winning a minority government in 2006, Harper promised to get to the bottom of the climate file and handle the issue properly. Taking advantage of his novice environment minister's strong Inuit heritage of independent thinking, it's now time to finally fulfill his pledge.
Tom Harris, Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition and Dr. Tim Ball, Victoria, BC-based climatologist and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg.
