Climate of hope returns

There is a new feeling in the air. It feels like hope.

For those in Canada concerned about the environment, this is an unusual feeling.

For nearly a decade, hope has taken quite a beating, as Stephen Harper’s government launched an anti-environmental crusade that resembled a scorched-earth campaign. An abbreviated sampler helps fill in the anguished picture. The Harper government pulled the plug on the Office of the National Science Advisor, squashed the 25-year-old National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, folded the First Nations Statistical Institute and shuttered seven out of nine Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries, sending decades of public research to landfills.

More than 700 environmental scientists from Environment Canada were either fired or “repurposed,” and a media gag order was slapped on the remaining researchers. Canada also withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, disemboweled the Species at Risk Act, defunded the world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area, where key research on acid rain, phosphates and mercury pollution was conducted, and torpedoed the mandatory longform census. At the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit, Canada was given the “Fossil of the Year” award by over 400 NGOs, claiming Canada had been the world’s most obstructive nation when it came to forging a climate change accord.

And, enhancing the “fear factor,” seven environmental groups, including the David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defence and Tides Canada, were monitored by the Canadian Revenue Agency regarding their charity status. The list goes on. Hope on the ropes. With the Liberal victory, however, a new picture is emerging, and sanguine changes have been swift.

As prime minister, Justin Trudeau immediately renewed the mandatory longform census, the backbone of all social scientific research in the country. In addition, he invited premiers and an all-party delegation, including Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, Parliament’s most ecologically literate member, to represent Canada at the Paris climate change summit next month.

In addition, “Climate Change” has been added to the Ministry of the Environment title, and two new portfolios have been created: Ministry of Science and Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. Signalling a winsome policy shift, newly minted Science Minister Kirsty Duncan pledged, “We’re going to un-muzzle our scientists.” What a concept.

One can see hope getting up off the canvas. But this emerging ecological hope thankfully extends beyond Canada, and is being discerned by seasoned veterans of environmental struggles.

During a recent visit to Toronto, scientist Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, a pivotal book on climate change, noted that for the first time on a decade, he sees signs of realistic hope.

In fact, Flannery, named Australian of the Year in 2007, had been so depressed about the climate crisis he could not even write about it until a little over a year ago, when some positive tendrils of change began to appear. One was the March 2015 report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The report noted that, though 2014 saw economic growth worldwide, greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation and energy sectors stalled. This was not expected. Usually increased economic growth leads to increased emissions. As IEA chief economist Fatih Birol noted, “For the first time, greenhouse gas emissions are decoupling from economic growth.”

A second source of optimism are “natural” carbon capture methods, involving biochar, wetlands, and seaweed cultivation, which Flannery contends hold great promise, and describes in his new book, Atmosphere of Hope.

For David Suzuki, the dean of Canadian environmentalism, there are also inspiring signs on the eco-horizon. Speaking at a 25th-anniversary celebration for the Suzuki Foundation in Toronto last week, he commented that the bilateral emissions curbs by China and the U.S., the two largest greenhouse gas producers, was deeply promising.

And, surprisingly for a self-described atheist, Suzuki pointed to Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical Laudato Si as a major source of hope. Noting that the Pope combines social justice, ecology, and economic critique, and frames climate change as a moral issue, he called the document “beautiful.”

“I have read the encyclical three times,” the veteran CBC broadcaster declared, “and every time I read it, I weep.”

A bruised hope stands, shakes his head, and, with an eternal spring in his step, heads for the centre of the ring.