Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Canadians Want More Debate on Climate Change

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“Canadians are deeply frustrated by the quality of politicians’ discussions of climate change and global warming according to a nationally representative poll carried out for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy by COMPAS Research and completed September 29, 2008. Such frustrations cut across regions and party groupings.  Most Canadians tend to subscribe to the anthropogenic viewpoint that human activity is responsible for global warming and climate change.  An overwhelming majority of the public nonetheless does not believe that the causes of climate change have been fully identified or that the debate has been settled. By a more than 4:1 margin, the public calls upon the media to provide more multi-sided reporting on the issue.”  Read more here.

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  1. Gordon Robertson says

    Thanks for the post Jennifer. I’ve been wondering how my fellow Canucks stand on this.

    I wrote to a local newspaper, The Vancouver Sun, asking an editor in charge of global warming articles why the reporting wasn’t more balanced. I included a long diatribe on the scientific reasons why it needed to be. He replied that he had no scientific knowledge but that the articles were slanted toward AGW theory because the “vast majority” of scientists supported that theory.

    That newspaper, which supports right-wing governments, had global warming activist David Suzuki as editor for a day. I wrote to the female editor in the article about more balanced reporting and received no reply.

    http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=5ea07880-3a33-4aaa-b128-a694a5595992

    The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is the national, government-funded television network. Their radio section is biased completely toward AWG theory and David Suzuki has a regular program on TV called “the Nature of Things”. I find it to be an overly-simplified series based more on drama than fact. Suzuki is a geneticist who seems to think he’s an atmospheric physicist.

    We do have one newspaper that prints good stuff on skeptics, The National Post.

    http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=c6a32614-f906-4597-993d-f181196a6d71

    Overall, it’s hard to tell. We are in the midst of an election and the Tories have a commanding lead in the polls. I think that has to do with their stance on Kyoto, which is essentially none. I think Canadians are tired of talk about carbon taxes, and our local provincial government, the only government to implement such a tax, is in trouble.

    I know there’s a dislike of leftist politics expressed by some in this blog, but Canada is a strange mix of left and right. There’s really no indication here that global warming issues are either left or right.

    I get the feeling that Australian left-leaning governments may be patterned on the old British labour governments, although I don’t know. Having grown up in Scotland for much of my formative years, I know those leftish governments arose out of need more than anything. The need lead to excesses in welfare abuse and union corruption, but we escaped the worst of that in Canada. That may be because we share a border with the United States.

    Many right-wingers in Canada support social programs such as universal medicare, in fact, they demand it be kept intact. There are calls for privatization of the system a la Thatcher in Britain, but most Canadians seem opposed to that. It’s not that they can’t afford it, since most Canadians are affluent, it seems to be part of the Canadian psyche.

    Our local provincial government, who are about as right-wing as Mussolini, has been bent on privatizing what it can get away with. When they tried to do it with BC Hydro, our government-owned electricity generation system, the voters drew the line and the government backed off.

    It’s surprising to me, then, that so many Canadians want to see more balanced reporting on global warming issues. I have a sneaking suspicion that it was more the way global warming was presented that has drawn the distrust. That was done by the Liberals who have been in power much of the past 30 years.

    They are an odd bunch sometimes. They have been right of center IMHO over the past 15 to 20 years, and have always bent over backwards to support corporations. I find it amusing that they are pushing an anti-corporate agenda in calling for carbon taxes and the like. The leader, Dion, seems particularly weak and sounds like an old school marm with his ‘Green Shift’ rhetoric. Canadians don’t seem to fall for that as easily as our neighbours to the south might.

    I think we Canadians identify with Australians and Kiwis, having been former Commonwealth partners. It’s perplexing to me in that respect why more Australians aren’t up their governments nose about it.