Margaret Wente Reads the Tea Leaves of Copenhagen

In the lead-up to the Cancun climate change conference, Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail has expressed what must seem to her to be the obvious interpretation of the failure of last year's Copenhagen conferences, in her opinion piece Can environmentalism be saved from itself. For those that believe in the infallibility of the market, the lack of concrete action can only mean that the science must be wrong or else the market would have taken action. The Europeans have demonstrated their complicity in the global warming "scheme" by daring to trade with the rest of the world even as they are increasing their carbon emissions, so that when you count the carbon cost of what they've imported, their overall carbon footprint has (surprise, surprise) gone up. Doesn't it mean anything to provide an example of what is possible? Surely, Europe has demonstrated that a major economy can reduce its carbon footprint, as it clearly has done (at least internally), without devastating its economy. Yet, Wente seems convinced that other parts of the world are incapable of doing the same without "untold cost and certain damage to their own interests".

Wente is optimistic that the "failure" of Copenhagen will mean that environmentalists will be able to focus once again on real environmental issues such as lions and tigers. She's quite confident that the polar bears will survive the thawing of the arctic ice cap, but the big cats are in trouble. I'm not so convinced that polar bears will survive. It also seems quite evident that our coral reefs, already a small fraction of their extent a century ago, will in all likelihood disappear as a result of warming oceans. Many other species, if not already extinct, are also threatened by global warming. Contrary to Wente's view, Global Warming is an environmental issue.

However, money has spoken. The fossil fuel industry, through its proxies in Canadian, American and other friendly governments, as well as a massive media campaign, has managed to block any effective action at Copenhagen. That doesn't mean global warming has suddenly stopped, only that we've allowed a small (though powerful) interest group to shorten yet again our rapidly closing window of opportunity to effectively slow down its impact. The other obvious interpretation is that democracy is badly broken in the western economies. I'm sure that the average Canadian was not lobbying our government to block U.S. clean oil rules, but they were quietly doing it anyway.

Let's all pray to the gods of Wall Street that Margaret Wente's analysis is correct. We need a miracle.