Backing away from absurd, grandiose policies would shift attention toward more practical measures
Is the era of Big Climate over? It may be that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has implicitly declared as much.
He would not say such a thing, as when Bill Clinton emphatically declared the “era of big government over” in the 1990s. Clinton was trying to show that he was a different kind of progressive, leaving behind the activist government of the 1960s. In contrast, the Vogue-photographed Trudeau was Big Climate’s most glamorous spokesmodel.
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His absence at the UN climate jamboree in Dubai is thus striking. Instead, conservative premiers Danielle Smith and Scott Moe are both on hand to promote oil and gas deals in the petro-state, but not the prime minister. Was it only eight years ago that a newly elected Trudeau descended upon the climate summit in Paris with a bloated retinue of hundreds, all the better to declare that “Canada is back?” He has now backed away.
Canada really isn’t back — we have never been quite so marginal in international relations as we are now — but certainly we were celebrated in Big Climate circles. In the heady days of 2019 Trudeau was even granted an audience with Greta Thunberg.
That was a sign, in retrospect, that Big Climate was in decline. Inviting a Swedish teenager to indignantly lecture global leaders indicated that Big Climate was entering its absurd phase.
Big Government, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Football (FIFA now, NFL in future) are behemoths that seem unstoppable, commanding all they survey. Then they enter their absurd phase, when their excesses become increasingly implausible. They don’t disappear. The advantage of being big is a certain momentum that carries forward, albeit diminished.
There is a point though when there is a qualitative change, even if massive quantity endures for a while. For Big Government, perhaps it was Clinton’s declaration. For Big Tobacco, it was when the assembled chief executives swore under oath that they had no idea that smoking could be addictive.
Big Climate had a good run. Ecological consciousness has been growing since the late 1960s. It’s a relatively easy sell. Everyone desires clean air, clean water, parks and natural beauty. Conservatives like conservation, after all, and progressives like government regulation to get there.
I don’t have strong views on climate change, much in the same way that I don’t have strong views on the weather. I expect that a large majority are in favour of reasonable measures justified by reasonable arguments. Littering is now considered unacceptable, the hole in the ozone was fixed, there was a treaty on acid rain. There is likely a similar consensus on climate matters.
Big Climate was born out of that wider ecological movement, specifically at the 1992 “Earth summit” in Rio. The current Dubai “COP28” conference is the 28th “conference of the parties” that grew out of Rio 1992. Big Climate grew ever bigger, so much so that 70,000 delegates landed in Dubai this year. Along the way were milestones, such as Kyoto 1997 and Paris 2015, in which Big Climate managed to get wide agreement on re-ordering the global economy in principle, if not practice.
This year, though, one gets the sense that Big Climate has become wrapped in too many contradictions, capped off with a farcical conference in the petro-state’s air-conditioned desert. The incongruity of it all was nicely highlighted by the brouhaha that erupted when the Emirati conference chairman blithely declared that there was no real scientific basis to phase out fossil fuels.
Consider the Germans, Big Climate’s biggest booster in the heart of Europe. This year marked the end of German nuclear power, with the last reactors closed. Germany has now moved to a higher carbon future, burning coal and natural gas.
That proved a bit tricky when at war with Russia in Ukraine, so Germany turned to Canada for natural gas supplies. Trudeau refused to sell Germans our natural gas, directing them instead to Qatar. That strikes most folks as absurd.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, who began his administration with an ostentatious cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, lest Canadian resources pollute the American energy grid, has now decided to increase imports of Venezuelan oil and gas. That, too, is absurd.
Then there are billions upon billions of dollars — with Canada and the EU scrambling to match American subsidies — being lavished upon electric battery manufacturers, making “green jobs” a giant tax-funded boondoggle. That the great climate villain in the auto sector, Volkswagen, is a beneficiary of such largesse only makes the absurdity more galling.
Against all that, Trudeau’s decision to compromise his climate agenda to save a few Atlantic ridings is a rather low-voltage issue. Yet it shows that Big Climate is losing its power.
The end of Big Climate may be good for the climate. Backing away from grandiose and absurd policies shifts attention toward more practical and reasonable measures that will garner wider public support.
COP28 in the desert is a suitable end to Big Climate. It ends with a bang, as it were. And Trudeau withdraws with a whimper.
National Post
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