Carbon offsets, the one-tonne challenge. Where are these green promises of yesteryear and what will be the boondoggles of tomorrow?

Pledges made for political expediency

Are the misnamed “carbon offsets” still around? Just to be clear, they weren’t meant to offset carbon, rather carbon dioxide. When the phrase and the program were new you heard about them all the time. Each time some ecoSaint drove a car or took a plane ride it was advertised that “carbon offsets” were bought to cover his sin, i.e., balance the global warming books. It was the old, discredited notion of “buying indulgences” updated from the grasping papacy of the Middle Ages, and applied to the current theosophy of the Earth Savers, the Goreites and the ever-jetting Magi of the IPCC.

Hollywood stars flying their stylists in to Cannes would note they “offset” the jet ride. David Suzuki drove a bus around Canada on vain green tour and made it very clear that offsets were offsetting the inevitable fumes of the hapless pilgrimage. Somewhere in Guatemala or Morocco trees were being planted so that the bus could drive the Trans Canada and he could hector Canadians, guilt-free. Air Canada was in on the act offering customers the “opportunity” to pay an extra fee to “offset” the planetary harm of choosing their airline. Feel guilty about flying to Whistler for a ski weekend? Be of good cheer — for as little as 30 or 40 bucks the airline would swab your conscience by watering a shrub somewhere far distant as an offset.

Then there was also the “one-tonne challenge,” another bundle of green froth unloaded by what used to be Environment Canada. It’s best explicated by a report that came out after that Kyoto-induced, Chrétien-government program ran its course in 2005. The first two sentences of its findings are classic: “The good news for Environment Canada is that people seem to remember seeing ads featuring a rant from comedian Rick Mercer about the one-tonne challenge. The bad news is they have no idea what he is talking about.” Noel Coward-grade stuff, this. The coup de grace came a few sentences later: “(People) had no understanding of why they would want to participate or even what a tonne is.”

Then there was the equally ludicrous One Million Acts of Green. It got a highprofile liftoff from George Stroumboulopoulos (then of CBC’s The Hour) and offered a quick hike to a green heaven by a few acts of petty penance, such as “replacing your light bulbs,” wearing a turtleneck at home, or “starting a composting program at your local school.” These and like follies were intended, of course, to ward off the demiurges of global warming, though the idea of a schoolyard compost heap, scraps of uneaten hamburgers and discarded tofu in slow decay, as a cure for global sea rise and planetary overheating was perhaps a bit overblown.

Where are they now, those green promises of yesteryear? Most, in the merciful closet of willed amnesia, purged in Thomas Browne’s immortal phrase by the “iniquity of oblivion.” This is the way with green promises — they have the life of a summer fly, or (Browne again) are but “a mushroom of a night’s growth” with as little point or purpose.

Some green promises, though, have a longer stay, and of these Ontario’s great green march is king and sovereign of them all. I am beginning to think that the McGuinty-Wynne green dreams was all along a plot by the heathens of Big Oil to destroy the credibility of all planet-saving crusades forever. Or, maybe, it was those busy Russians.

Just this week, Ontario’s Premier Kathleen Wynne — gliding along at some 11 or 13 per cent in the polls, under a hurricane of protest powered by her own governments policies, hydro rates cresting into the stratosphere, with 60,000 Ontario citizens having had their power cut off in a single year — announced a 25 per cent cut in Ontario hydro bills. She did most of this by a simple shift — extending the province’s debt-repayment period — at a measly cost to future voters (“think of the children”) of a mere $25 billion.

Last week it was chucking out $14,000 grants for people to buy $100,000 Tesla electric cares. This week it’s buying a thin slice of political hope for a change in the anti-Liberal mood today, for $25 billion to be paid much later down the green road. Today’s sheep are spared, so that tomorrow’s may be more lavishly fleeced.

All of which should really and finally put some skepticism into reporting on green plans and the visionaries who tout them, they who threaten doom and promise paradise, and then get the terms of each reversed so perfectly. The politicians who gave Canadians the one-tonne challenge and the tacky boy scoutism of one million acts of green have never been called to account for the feeble results of either. As for Ontario’s latest $25-billion debacle — you could shut down a lot of gas plants for $25 billion! — they won’t be around when that explodes, either.

The good news, however, is that there is no way such ludicrous policies could ever migrate from Queen’s Park to the Parliament Hill.

NOTE: No carbon dioxide was exhaled during the writing of this column.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW, THOSE GREEN PROMISES OF YESTERYEAR?

CRAIG ROBERTSON / POSTMEDIA NEWS Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne this week announced a huge cut in Hydro bills, a move made possible by extending the province’s debt repayment period at a cost of $25 billion to future voters.