Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Environment

The Great White North looks at the Map

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Colleague Jeff has supplied a convincing overview of Canada’s difficult role in the Arctic. Canada likes to mythologize its great open spaces in the wild north, creating emblems ranging from lines in the national anthem – “the true north strong and free” – to films like “Nanook of the North” to art like the sandstone sculptures and Baker Lake prints that southerners pay plenty of loonies to own to Stan Roger’s great song “The Northwest Passage” to the Edmonton Eskimos football team. Norm Kwong, one of their legendary players and perhaps the only major (ethnically) Chinese football player in history, recalls once hearing an Edmonton matron in the audience for one of his interviews tell her neighbour, “See I told you they were real Eskimos”.

But what Canada, the world’s second largest country, hasn’t done is provide military support for its mythology, making it vulnerable to the aggressiveness of the first and third largest countries, which face it in the Arctic. Instead it has slugged it out with tiny Denmark (controlling gigantic Greenland) in a farcical struggle over miniscule Hans Island. The excuse for lack of muscle in the Arctic has been strictly economic in the past, but this may be changing because the tide of Canadian public opinion has swung for the Arctic, and that has the politicians’ ears. Almost twenty years ago Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney cancelled Liberal plans for ice breakers for the navy, something which both Norway and Denmark manage to finance, and the US and Russia have both ice breakers and nuclear submarines out on Arctic patrol. In its lead editorial today, the conservative Vancouver Province advised the government to lease ice breakers if they are too cheap to build them, but to get them before it is too late to the newly announced far north military base with deep water port on the northern tip of Baffin Island, and to the beefed-up existing bases. Canadians will soon see whether their government is serious when it says it will provide protection for Canadian values from sea to sea to sea.

Canada Takes on Russia: Cold War II?

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Bob and Doug McKenzie are on assignment in the Arctic, traveling with Prime Minister Harper who visited the Arctic to plant the Maple Leaf to lay claim to its rich mineral deposits for Canada. This trip was in response to Russian President Putin’s sneak attack last week with two miniature submarines planting the Russian flag somewhere beneath the North Pole. These moves are partially in response to global warming which is melting the Arctic ice cap in direct defiance to U.S. Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma who claims global warming is a fraudulent tool manufactured by the infidels (e.g. Democrats and non-Christians).

As described in the NY Times, the race for mineral rights in the Arctic looms as a possible Worldwide Cold War as the Danes race to the region to map their own claims that the Lomonosov Ridge, a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range, is attached to the Danish territory of Greenland, making it a geological extension of the Arctic island.

Norway and the U.S. also make claims to rights in the area but the U.S. is apparently banking on winning the Iraq War sometime in the next century and stealing all of their oil to power the next generation of Hummers. Talk of moving Vice President Cheney’s office to the Arctic was squelched by White House sources, as “wishful thinking by the American people”.

The world watches these developments with anxious concern mixed with admiration for the audacity of Canada as it takes on the Russian Bear while the U.S. waits to move in after the dirty work is done.

In other news President George W. Bush refused to add 5 cents to the federal tax on gasoline saying it “would be premature”, and that “ we will cross that bridge when we have the funds to fix it.”

The More Climate Changes the More We’re Screwed

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Among the decisions at last months EU summit two were related. Related in that way that allows one to see between the lines. Allows one to read the political sub-text that is usually meant to be obscured.

The big publicized decision was the EU ordering member states to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by 2020. This decision also required specific methods to reach that mandate. (Tho some of the new members grumped — saying they had hoped to leave micro-managed state planning behind when they escaped the USSR— maybe climate change required a bit of extra discipline.) Anyway,among the specific steps to be taken is forced replacement in each nation of a percentage of carbon-intensive light bulbs with more eco-friendly (and expensive) ones.

Well. okay.

But then came the–less publicized– related decision. A 100% tariff on imports of these
eco-friendly bulbs was extended to 2020. Seimens, the German manufacturer has a virtual lock on the EU market. It can pocket the excess profit europeans are forced by law to fork up.

So the sub-text comes into focus.

Eco-terrified Europeans are demanding climate change action. EU authorities are giving it to them. So to speak. Climate change policy comes with baggage europeans aren’t asking for. The baggage from the left is increased central control of european local decisions. The baggage from the right is increased protection of corporate profits.

The capitalists and the authoritarians are immediate big winners. And, hey, maybe there’ll actually be some climate change benefit by 2020. European’s will have to wait to see on that one. Mean time they pay up and shut up.

If this were just a one-off thing confined to the EU it wouldn’t be worth blogging. But maybe there is a universal theme? A sorta cynical global political manipulation of popular terror over climate change? A charade in which the left and right seem to fight each other but you and I are the only ones getting bruises?

In the US there is a worrying coalescence that looks remarkably similar. The Washington Post  today reports on a climate change debate between Kerry and Gingrich that was billed as a “smackdown fight” but degenerated into a love-in. Trees were being hugged by left and right alike.

So what? Nothing, really. Except that as voters we want to be careful what we ask for.

Europeans asked for action on climate change. What they’re getting is poorer and less autonomous.

Canada Leaves Green for Brown

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Canada is making it into the German papers more than it used to, but it’s not always for flattering reasons. It used to be that the only Canadian stories worth carrying had to do with grizzly bear attacks, Quebec separatism (almost always misportrayed) and sports; Steve Nash is Dirk Nowitzky’s best friend or Canadian thugs won another match against European skilled squads. The latter has however disappeared of late as Sweden showed it could beat anybody in any number of ways, including thuggery.
Bur now Prime Minister Harper actually gets his photo in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, just like the fantastic twins now ruling Poland. And that’s a bad sign, because the twins never get in unless they’ve done something extremely silly. So there was Harper making a speech in which he attempted to announce that Canada was getting out of its Kyoto commitments. This did not go over well, to put it mildly, and now this decision will have to be reconsidered. A Canadian prime minister should know he’s in big trouble when the foreign press begins to compare him very unfavourably to Arnold Schwarzenegger.