For authorizing the Bay du Nord oil project, federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has been ostracized by his old environmentalist family. His traveling companion Hugo Latulippe, the filmmaker, exhausted him in these words:
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
I heard you on the radio this morning
Carefully
I recognized your hesitations
In the right places
Those who betray despite everything the enlightened, consistent man
The man of convictions
The one I know
I know it when you say the opposite of what you mean
I know it my friend
I recognize you
I can not believe what I’m hearing
Who would have thought, Steven, 20 years ago
That it would be you who would narrate our bankruptcy on the radio?
Of our bankruptcy as ecologists
Of our generational bankruptcy
Hugo Latulippe’s Facebook status was capped with a photo from “20 years ago”, the one where Steven Guilbeault is under arrest after having illegally climbed the CN Tower to unroll a banner accusing Canada and the United States united to be climate killers“climate killers”.
Twenty-one years later, the environmental activist is Canada’s Minister of the Environment. I say it without malice: Steven Guilbeault discovers that climbing the CN Tower is less complex than navigating the sea filled with icebergs of realpolitik.
He is not the first.
Bay du Nord is at least 300 million barrels of oil from 2028 to 2058, off the coast of Newfoundland.
Bay du Nord is an oil project authorized by Ottawa two days after the IPCC once again sounded the alarm about climate change, which is more severe than expected. The science is clear: there is an urgent need to stop burning gas and oil.
Ottawa’s response: we’re still going to burn oil.
Realpolitik? The province of Newfoundland and Labrador wanted the green light from the federal government for obvious reasons: its economy is coughing, its public finances are suffering. The Trudeau government has toyed with the idea of not allowing Bay du Nord by giving billions to Newfoundland and Labrador. She was not retained. Refusing Bay du Nord would have been a strong symbol of the Trudeau government.
Steven Guilbeault therefore had to swallow this snake. But Steven Guilbeault is not just any Minister of the Environment: he is Steven Guilbeault, precisely, ex-face of Greenpeace in Quebec for years, whistleblower of climate killers.
But he is part of a government that must govern for all Canadians. Among these Canadians: thousands of people who still live by extracting gas, extracting oil. He is part of a government that is up for re-election. Which has seats in Newfoundland and Labrador and the Maritimes. Who doesn’t want to lose them.
I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying it’s good. I say it’s part of the political reality, with all that entails of unnatural calculations and big discrepancies tearing the hamstring muscles of ministers, forced to keep smiling while assuring us that everything is going to be okay, that their adversaries are worse than them.
Yes, he reasons, we authorize Bay du Nord…
But the climate plan that I presented a few days ago has targets that far exceed the GHGs generated by Bay du Nord.
What is true.
But which could very well be wrong, because on the one hand, the GHGs linked to Bay du Nord for the extraction of (at least) 300 million barrels of oil in 30 years and their combustion are very, very concrete…
And on the other hand, Mr. Guilbeault’s targets may be “ambitious”, but they are just that: targets.
And Canada has historically never met its GHG reduction targets, whether under the Liberals or the Conservatives.
Add to that that Mr. Guilbeault’s plan bases a lot of hopes on two variables that have not been proven: carbon capture and storage, as well as the contribution of hydrogen in the reduction of GHGs…
In short, Steven Guilbeault’s climate calculation follows the same logic as the guy who wants to lose weight but decides to eat the tub of ice cream and promises himself to go to the gym more often next week.
Hugo Latulippe mentioned 1984 of Orwell, a dystopian world where the meaning of words is diverted, where they signify the opposite of what they describe. He reproaches his friend Guilbeault for saying that “war is peace”.
We can personalize the debate, and I understand the friends of Steven Guilbeault, fellow ecologists, to feel personally betrayed.
But I think the fault lies elsewhere. The problem is that the environment is not THAT important in the consciousness of ENOUGH people. It is ONE priority, among others, often more immediate, more concrete. This isn’t the first time I’ve pointed this out.1.
The result is that there is no great political price to pay for being unambitious in reducing GHGs in this country. Governments, parties: who has already lost elections for lack of ambition, on the environment?
No matter how hard I look, I can’t find it.
To personally skin Steven Guilbeault, to put the climate monkey on his back, on his back alone, is to save our own collective indolence on this subject. Guilbeault is doing what he can with the real popular support he has for the climate fight.
I say that this collective support is not strong enough for Steven, the former ecologist, to be proud of Guilbeault, the minister.