GREG POWELL, 03 JUN 2010
On June 25 and 26, Canada's Muskoka region will play host to G8 leaders and entourages to set priorities as wealthy nations in areas such as "health, education and peace and security". I find it interesting that "environment" isn't listed in the Government of Canada's short-list description of G8 issues. I wonder if this reflects the government's priorities, despite Canadians clearly calling for action to stop climate change and environmental decline.
Greg Powell is Alberta Acts on Climate Change's project coordinator
A recent poll by Nanos, a reputable firm, found that Canadians identified "Global warming" most frequently as the number one priority going into the G8/G20 meetings. And yet the federal government only begrudgingly and stealthily released its Climate Change Plan to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, and the plan admits there is no plan to meet stated targets, weak as they are.
My dream list for G8/G20 topics might include the following (not necessarily in order):
- A global end to fossil fuel subsidies
- Ending poverty
- Child-centred approaches to environmental, economic and social development (including a carbon tax)
- Deliberative democratic models for policy decision-making
(This list changes regularly, but as of June 2010, that's where I stand.)
Each of these topics warrants a separate blog post, so I'll be succinct here.
With support from Environment Minister Jim Prentice, Finance Canada advocates for ending subsidies to fossil fuels. This stance was only revealed in a leaked memo but Mike de Souza has written a fair bit on eliminating subsidies. At the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, Finance Ministers were tasked with developing timelines to "[r]ationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption." I won't pretend to understand all of the policy option at play here, but I understand the concept of the government not giving money to high-earning fossil fuel companies but instead using that money to fight poverty or subsidize research and development of green technologies.
Ending poverty and reducing disparity between the rich and poor has plethora benefits, which one sees when considering a place like Sweden (which notably does have some work to do). Health, security, happiness, environmental sustainability etc. all increase as poverty and rich-poor disparity decrease. However, amidst all the compelling social, economic and environmental reasons to end poverty, I find the moral obligation the most convincing.
A good friend of mine claims that increasing emotional intelligence in children is our society's greatest challenges. He makes a compelling argument. Greed, insecurity, social malaise, addiction, etc have roots in childhood. Equipping children with the tools to manage their emotions builds their capacity to take on broad challenges, such as climate change and environmental decline. Raffi has done a lot of work on "child honouring", which is not child-worshipping, as some parents do, but which places children at the focal point of our decisions. I believe Canada's approach to climate change, for example, would be drastically different if we held children as the focus of our policy decisions. If we truly held children's well-being at the centre of our decisions, everything else would fall into place. (Raffi's Child Honouring provides a powerful context to some of these thoughts.)
Finally, we need new models of governance. I have recently been reading about deliberative democracy and find some compelling arguments for its use as a central model for policy decisions. It basically uses citizens juries - rather than experts, bureaucrats and politicians (regardless of qualifications) - to set policies. The citizens of G8/G20 countries could all benefit from this model of governance.
What's your list of G8/G20 topics?
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