Twenty-five years in the life of Planet Earth is a heartbeat; a cosmic blink of an eye. For the bulk of the 3.6 billion-year history of our planet, humanity has not been among those present. If those 3.6 billion years were placed along a timeline one kilometre long, homo sapiens (the self-proclaimed smart species) make their appearance at about two centimetres from the end. The Industrial Revolution start- ed just 1/8,000 of a centimetre from the current time.
In that context, it is all the more startling how much damage humanity has done to the biosphere. We are alone in the solar system. Life on Earth makes it stand out, a blue- green orb whose nearest neighbours are gaseous and unliv- able. Earth’s history is one of life continually renewing itself ”” of natural cycles that maintained equilibrium. The chem- istry of our atmosphere created a Goldilocks-like ”œjust right” climate to sustain life. Not too hot, not too cold. If not for the 275 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, creating a natural greenhouse effect, the plan- et would be too cold to sustain life. The ozone layer kept out the sun’s most dangerous rays, again allowing life to flour- ish. Nitrogen fixation, ecosystem balance, and hydrological cycles ”” all of these and more constantly operated to pro- tect the life of the planet.
In a remarkably short time we have pushed major cycles into reverse. We have unleashed chemicals to destroy the ozone layer. We have changed the basic chemical balance of our atmosphere, thus destabilizing the climate. We have cre- ated the period of greatest extinctions since the massive extinction event that took out the dinosaurs. We have done all this without any intention to do so. These impacts are seen as unfortunate, and somewhat unimportant, side effects of the Great Economic Project. Technology and industrial expansion are the highest calling of modern societies.
Over the last 25 years, the environmental movement has been successful on a wide range of issues. Governments, responding to public demands, have banned lead in gasoline and phosphates in detergents, removed about a dozen pesticides from legal use, reduced sulphur dioxide emissions (which cause acid rain), banned ozone-depleting chemicals, and protected millions of hectares of wilderness. Urban air is cleaner in many ways; watercourses are less visibly polluted. Yet, the problems are more urgent; the risks of irreversible catastrophic global change have never been higher. Our self-inflicted damage to our life support system threatens our very survival in a way only rivaled by nuclear war. Yet, the politics of the moment continue to leave the environment as a file we can attend to later, when there are less pressing issues to be resolved. In 2005, it is increasingly evident that we have run out of time to procrastinate. Later is now.
The modern environmental movement was well estab- lished by the time Policy Options made its debut. The range of issues that had occupied the attention of the Canadian environmental movement through the 1960s and 70s included pesticides, the spread of nuclear technology in Canada, loss of wilderness, the threat of oil tankers to our coastlines and ozone-depleting propellants in spray cans.
By 1969, DDT was banned in Canada. In 1970 the first Earth Day was observed, and by 1972, the first United Nations conference to deal with environmental issues was held in Stockholm, with Canadian Maurice Strong at the helm as secretary general. In the wake of the 1972 UN con- ference, governments around the world created environ- ment departments. Canada was slightly ahead of the curve having grafted together a number of services of the government (wildlife, parks, pollution control offices, etc) into Environment Canada in 1970.
Whereas the environmental issues of the 1960s had largely been seen as local ”” polluted streams, poor ambi- ent air quality in cities ”” the 1970s and 1980s would focus increasingly on environmental problems that were more regional in character. In a steady progression, the 1990s and the early 21st century have focused concern on issues that are truly global. It was clear enough in the 1980s why the issues were more regional. The approach of the 1960s and 70s was, at least to some extent, summed up in the phrase ”œthe solution to pollution is dilution.” So, to improve local air quality, factories, smelters and power plants built taller stacks. Local air quality improved, but at a cost. The pollution traveled farther and fell as pollution elsewhere ”” as acid rain or in the build-up of toxic chemicals in Arctic wildlife and Inuit mothers’ milk.
The 1980s dawned with a federal election that removed the brief minor- ity government of Joe Clark and brought back Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau with an ebullient ”œWelcome to the 1980s!”
Canadians can be forgiven for not noticing that the Clark government had been the most responsive to envi- ronmental concerns of any federal government in our history to date. Ironically, the man we revere for his protections of civil liberties and for repatriating the Constitution, who is so closely identified with Canadian wilderness ”” canoeing in his buckskin jacket ”” Trudeau himself showed minimal concern for the environment. Trudeau’s government was largely hos- tile to environmental concerns. Trudeau ridiculed protesters against nuclear reactors and those who lob- bied for solar energy.
Meanwhile, it was in the nine brief months of the Clark government that we had our strongest and most committed environment minister, John Fraser. It was Fraser who set the stage for one of the major issues of the coming decade ”” acid rain. Describing it as the ”œmost serious and pressing environmental problem Canada has ever faced,” Fraser re-framed the dis- cussion within Environment Canada. He issued a near-edict that the depart- mental civil servants were to stop referring to the problem of ”œLRTAP ”” long range transport of acidic precipi- tation” and start calling it ”œacid rain.” I can still hear Fraser recounting vol- ubly the protestations of his staff, ”œBut you see, minister, you cannot call it ”˜acid rain.’ Some of the precipitation comes as snow, or fog or even dry dep- osition…” To which he responded, ”œDammit, we are calling it acid rain.”
Lastly, to the credit of the Clark government was the reason for its defeat. John Crosbie’s budget was not intentionally a ”œgreen budget,” but its did contain an increase in gas taxes. As any student of ecological fiscal reform can tell you the most efficient way to reduce pollution is to tax those things that pollute, while reducing taxes on those things that do not.
Trudeau appointed John Roberts as his environment minister. Fortunately, John Fraser got hold of Roberts and the two of them agreed to continue along the course Fraser had started. Roberts worked to help estab- lish and fund a Canadian non- government educational and lobbying effort on acid rain. With the goal of raising awareness of the threat on both sides of the border, and achieving measurable specific cuts in sulphur dioxide, the Canadian Coalition on Acid Rain was born. By the early 1980s, scientists were reporting that acidifica- tion had damaged 150,000 of the 700,000 lakes in eastern Canada, and that 14,000 were actually acidified to the point of being unable to support aquatic life.
In 1981 when President Ronald Reagan visited Ottawa the lawns of Parliament Hill were full of protesters calling for an end to the US pollution wafting into Canada and causing acid rain. The old offices of the Canadian Nature Federation backed out onto Wellington Street from Queen Street, allowing a rare vantage point. Then Executive Director Rick Pratt managed to hang a bed sheet painted with bold red lettering: ”œSTOP ACID RAIN.” It actually was noticed. Ronald Reagan, of course, was the president who argued that trees were a bigger source of pollu- tion than industry. Nevertheless, by the end of the decade Canada would have succeeded in achieving binding reduc- tion targets for sulphur dioxide with the US, as well as commitments to the same effect from the seven eastern provinces.
Brian Mulroney came into office as prime minister following his landslide victory in the September 1984 election. Once again, environ- ment had not surfaced as a key elec- tion issue, but Mulroney had made the requisite pledge to clean up pol- lution and fight acid rain. There was nothing in Mulroney’s background or ideology to suggest he was to be the strongest prime minister in Canadian history in protecting the environment. Those who wish to disparage Mulroney’s record can quickly point to what was happen- ing in public opinion polls. Through the 1980s and particularly by the late 1980s, environmental concern was polling at new record highs. By 1988, an Environics poll found that 9 out of 10 Canadians believed that pollution was harming their health. In ”œtop of mind” polling, where peo- ple are asked an open-ended ques- tion about their concerns, environment was turning up as the number one concern.
Mulroney’s first choice for envi- ronment minister was not auspicious. Suzanne Blais-Grenier mused that it might not be a bad idea to allow log- ging and mining in parks. At the same time, the new finance minister, Michael Wilson, announced over $4 billion in cuts to the civil service ”” a quarter of which turned out to be in Environment Canada.
With Mulroney’s government suffering a series of black eyes over its first year environment record, by August 1985, Blais-Grenier was removed and Tom McMillan appointed. A few months earlier the Liberals had come to power in Ontario, with new Environment Minister Jim Bradley setting his sights on real progress against pollution. With later appointments of Clifford Lincoln as environment minister in Quebec’s Bourassa government, the stage was set for an extraordinary moment of political federal-provincial cooperation to achieve environmental goals. It was actually even better than an era of cooperation ”” the environment minis- ters were competitive to see who could do more and faster.
I was fortunate to work in McMillan’s office from 1986 to 1988. In those few short years, victories were achieved on a wide range of issues. Acid rain made it to the top of the bilateral agenda between those smiling Irish eyes, Mulroney and Reagan. Vice President George Bush ruefully explained that he’d gotten ”œan earful” about US sources of pollution in an Ottawa meeting with the prime minister.
With progress made in reducing sulphur dioxide emissions (between 1980 and 1990, sulphur diox- ide emissions form Canadian factories and coal plants decreased by 40 per- cent), the threat of ozone-depleting substances surfaced as the next clear priority. The progression of environ- mental problems was shifting from local to regional to global. Ozone deple- tion was the ultimate in a global threat. The discovery of a hole in the Antarctic ozone layer in 1985 brought public concerns to a new high. In fact, through the 1960s and 1970s concerns about the use of ozone-depleting sub- stances had spurred consumer boycotts of deodorants and hair spray with CFC propellants. In a cynical public rela- tions ploy, spray cans dropped the use of CFCs, convincing the public that vol- untary action had solved the problem. But the use of CFCs continued to rise, particularly in the manufacture of blown Styrofoam and in air condition- ing. These fabulous molecules, univer- sally heralded at their invention as commercial marvels, were non-toxic and tremendously stable. They simply did not break down ”” or at least they did not break down on earth. It turned out that as they floated inexorably to the stratosphere, where they broke down at just the point where the hun- gry chlorine molecule would inflict maximum damage to our ozone layer. Each liberated chlorine molecule from the chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) product could gobble up 70,000 molecules of ozone. Initially, the satellite readings showing an ozone hole were discarded by computer modeling that viewed such impossible numbers as ”œjunk.” It was a shock to the scientific communi- ty to see that the damage was not incremental. A seasonal hole was becoming a reality. By 1995, the ozone hole over Antarctica was more than 20 million square kilometres with 50 percent ozone depletion.
As in the acid rain issue, the first response of the indus- try responsible for the pollution was denial. The manufacturers of CFCs denied that the ozone layer was in trouble, and if it was, then their products had nothing to do with it. The sec- ond stage of predictable reac- tion was economic threat.
The inner workings of government
Keep track of who’s doing what to get federal policy made. In The Functionary.
The Functionary
Our newsletter about the public service.
Nominated for a Digital Publishing Award.
In September 1987, Montreal hosted the meeting that led to the first legally bind- ing agreement to reduce and ultimately ban the chemicals that destroy the ozone layer. The Montreal Protocol was the model for later efforts to negoti- ate controls on greenhouse gases. It set out the principle that the wealthy industrialized countries should go first, taking on the first round of reductions. Under the Montreal Protocol, developing coun- tries were actually permitted to increase their use of CFCs by 10 percent. The Montreal Protocol is working, and over time, as long as production of ozone- depleting substances remains illegal, the ozone layer should repair itself over a century from now.
The late 1980s also saw major wilderness struggles, particularly in British Columbia. Conflicts between environmentalists and First Nations on one side and logging interests on the other flared up on Meares Island in Clayoquot Sound and in the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii). The successful conclusion of national park negotiations between the Vander Zalm government in B.C. and the Mulroney government, protecting one third of the archipelago described as South Moresby on Haida Gwaii, was a high- light of McMillan’s achievements.
In 1987, Mulroney met with Norway’s Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland to officially accept the report from the World Commission on Environment and Development, which she had chaired. Reagan refused to grant her an audience. Canadians Maurice Strong and Jim MacNeill had played large roles in the process of the two-year commission that had held hearings around the world. The report, Our Common Future, placed the concept of ”œsustainable development” firmly into the lexicon of Canadian policy makers. Within a few years, Mulroney had created a number of sustainable development institutions ”” the National Round Table on Environment and Economy, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
Perhaps the most significant achievement of the Brundtland Commission was in initiating the sec- ond major United Nations conference on the environment. The UN General Assembly accepted the commission’s recommendation for a major global summit on environment and develop- ment, and agreed to the suggestion it occur on the twentieth anniversary of the Stockholm conference. With pub- lic environmental awareness and demands for action at an all-time high, it seemed that it would not matter much to the success of the summit that it would be held in 1992, a US election year. Sadly, it did matter.
Meanwhile, the international scien- tific community was increasingly alarmed about another global threat ”” climate change. Once again, Canada showed leadership in hosting the first major international gathering, designed to wake up policy makers. ”œOur Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security” was held in late June 1988 in a steamy Toronto heat wave. It was co-hosted by several UN agencies, the World Meteorological Organization, and was addressed by both Mulroney and Brundtland. The consensus state- ment from the conference opened: ”œHumanity is conducting an unintend- ed, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment, whose ultimate consequences are second only to global nuclear war.”
The next steps were on the road to Rio. In the 1988 fall election, Tom McMillan lost his seat in Prince Edward Island, protecting an unbroken Islander record to that date of never re-electing a sitting P.E.I. cabinet minister. Mulroney appointed Lucien Bouchard, an old friend who asked for the job. Bouchard became one of the best environment ministers in Canadian history. He quick- ly determined that funds for environ- mental initiatives were mere scraps. (He likened funding decisions in cabinet meetings to dogs fighting over a bone.) In order to ensure adequate resources provided in one fell swoop, Bouchard championed his ”œGreen Plan” ”” envi- sioned as a $5 billion fund for a five-year period, to be renewed ad infinitum. It was also Bouchard who set the Mulroney government’s target for green house gas reductions ”” to stabilize them at 1990 levels so that by 2000 the emissions would not exceed those of 1990.
While the domestic agenda reeled from Bouchard’s green ambitions, internationally, negotiations were in high gear in preparation for the Earth Summit, as the 1992 UN conference at Rio de Janiero would be known. Once again, Maurice Strong was tapped to be secretary general and he set an ambi- tious work plan in hopes of negotiat- ing three legally binding treaties (climate, forests, and biodiversity) as well as a new statement of principles and an Earth Charter. Canada’s diplo- matic effort was headed by the first ever Ambassador for Environment and Sustainable Development, Montreal lawyer Arthur Campeau, an old friend of Mulroney’s. Following Bouchard’s dramatic 1990 exit, the environment minister was briefly and abysmally Robert de Cotret, replaced prior to Rio by Jean Charest. It was Charest who would eventually deliver a slightly watered down Green Plan ”” $3 billion over six years. While a disappointment at the time, in hindsight, it was the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
Sadly, the political momentum born of public opinion polls and a green tide of outrage was dying away in the early 1990s. By June 1992, at the Earth Summit, some of the hoped-for agreements had fallen away. There would be no Earth Charter, and con- cerns for national sovereignty had tor- pedoed the Forest Convention. The Bush Administration did its best to derail many elements of the conven- tion. US electoral politics were a factor with Bush ridiculing Democratic vice presidential candidate Al Gore as ”œozone boy.” While Bush was defeated, his anti-environmental stance in June 1992 was damaging.
Despite US negotiators substantial- ly weakening the proposed Biodiversity Convention, Bush rejected it at the last minute. It was Campeau’s personal friendship with Mulroney that, in my view, saved the Biodiversity Convention. Days before the summit was to open, other industrialized nations dithered in the face of Bush’s sudden repudiation of the treaty. Campeau called Mulroney and told him that Canada must act to ensure the convention aimed at protecting life on Earth ”” from microbes to land- scapes ”” would not be abandoned. Within 24 hours of the US backing away, the PM stated Canada’s unequivocal commitment. All the other G7 nations followed suit. (President Clinton eventually signed the treaty on behalf of the US government, but Congress has still not ratified it.)
The Framework Convention on Climate Change also had a rough ride from the Bush administration, with Bush stating that the ”œAmerican lifestyle is not on trial.” Bush refused to sign any convention that included timelines and tar- gets for carbon dioxide reduc- tions. Nevertheless, the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) did set out that all parties accept that the threat of climate change is real and that we know enough to act to avoid ”œdangerous levels” of CO2 concentrations in our atmos- phere. The US, and virtually every nation on Earth, has signed and rati- fied the FCCC.
The environment was a factor in the 1993 election. Thanks to Liberal environment critic Paul Martin and the large role he had in drafting the 1993 Red Book of Liberal party promises, the Rio agenda was well entrenched in Liberal policy. Mulroney’s commitment to hold carbon emissions steady at no more than 1990 levels by the year 2000 was weak compared to the Liberal Red Book commitment to 20 percent reduc- tions below 1988 levels by 2005. One of the few Red Book environmental prom- ises to be honoured was the creation of an independent Commissioner for Environment and Sustainable Development, within the office of the auditor general. Chrétien made it clear that climate change was not a priority. Immediately undermining his new environment minister, Sheila Copps, and buttressing the minister of natural resources, Alberta’s Anne McLellan and her razor thin electoral victory, his win- ter 1994 speech announcing subsidies to the tar sands sent a clear signal that his government was in favour of more fossil fuel exploitation.
The first eight years of the Chrétien government were an environmental disaster. ”œProgram review” resulted in even more serious decimation of the core capacities of Environment Canada. Greenhouse gas emissions consistently rose, mak- ing environmentalists long for the more modest Mulroney target of freezing emissions at 1990 levels. By 2000, Canada’s emissions were 14 percent higher than in 1990. In 1997, Chrétien did take a personal interest in the outcome of the third confer- ence of the Parties (COP) under the FCCC in Kyoto, Japan. Thanks to a conversation with US President Bill Clinton and based largely on their personal rapport, Chrétien commit- ted Canada to 6 percent reductions below 1990 levels, with the US committing to 7 percent.
The millennium dawned with the dismal prospects of another, even less environmen- tally sympathetic, Bush in the White House. In spring 2001, President George W. Bush sur- prised even his own Environmen- tal Protection Agency chief by pulling the US out of Kyoto. The treaty nearly fell apart, but thanks to the European Union and strong diplomacy from Canada’s representative at the extended session of the sixth COP session in Bonn, Herb Gray, the protocol remained alive.
The highpoint of Canada’s envi- ronmental performance in the Chrétien government was the December 2002 ratification of Kyoto. Facing down opposition from much, but not all, of Canada’s business com- munity, the Alberta government, and the US administration, Canada voted to make the protocol binding law. One Liberal backbencher agonized more than most. It was clear to Paul Martin that while Prime Minister Chrétien would take the credit for ratification, it would be Prime Minister Paul Martin who would have to deliver the reduc- tions. In voting to ratify, Martin was personally committing himself and his reputation to achieving Kyoto targets.
The issues that lie ahead are the same ones the world community promised to tackle at the Rio Earth Summit ”” global poverty and a huge gap in North-South equity, the loss of species and ecosystems around the world, the threat of toxic pollution and the overwhelming imperative to shift economic systems off of fossil fuels. The Rio promises were broken, and badly. We give lip service to cli- mate change, while still promoting the most carbon-intensive crude, that refined from the muck of the Athabasca tar sands. Worse, the high quality, low in carbon natural gas from the Beaufort Sea is to be moved through 1300 kilometres of a subsur- face pipeline through the Mackenzie Valley’s (melting) inconsistent per- mafrost to be used to refine the high carbon crude in Alberta’s north.
Still there are signs of hope. Martin and his cabinet have demon- strated an impressive resolve to achieve Kyoto targets. Martin has also invited the world to Canada for the next major climate negotiations. In November 2005, Montreal will be the site of the 11th COP under the FCCC, and the first meeting of the parties under Kyoto, which became global law with Russia’s ratification on February 16, 2005.
And what of the life of Planet Earth in this cosmic blip of 25 years? The jury is still out as to whether humanity will survive. Some life likely will, but with six billion-plus people on the planet and with 20 percent of us consuming at such voracious rates that life support systems are falling apart, we do not seem far off course from those charted by previous civilizations doomed by their own technology, cul- ture, ingenuity and blindness ”” whether the ancient Maya, or Easter Islander. Recently the scientific debates on climate change have shifted from the 1980s discussions of ”œhas it started yet?” to ”œis it already too late? Have we reached a point of no return?” A study from the UK in January 2005 set as a ”œpoint of no return” a two degree Celsius temperature rise to occur if CO2 concentrations reached 400 parts per million. From a pre-Industrial Revolution level of 275 ppm, we have already reached 379 ppm. This level is virtually irre- versible, at least in human time frames. This means increased severe weather events, a melt- ing Arctic, more droughts, for- est fires and floods are now inevitable. To avoid even more catastrophic levels of climatic disruption, to which we may well not be able to adapt, such as a doubling of CO2, the glob- al scientific consensus is that we need reductions of 60 per- cent below 1990 levels. Kyoto’s 6 percent goal must be seen as a very modest first step.
Looking ahead, it is hard, even for a perennial optimist, to remain so. Our only hope is in a radical shift in priorities of governments and corporate leaders globally. That shift may be hastened by the growing recognition that new tech- nologies will create new economic power houses. Canada’s role in the world must be to bring recalcitrant nations, especially the US, into the reduction timetables. November 2005 offers Canada a rare opportunity to make a dif- ference in the life of the Earth.
