Race To The Bottom

September, and both Obama and Harper seem to be playing “who can gut the environment faster?” Obama gutted the EPA’s smog standards; Harper, Canada’s ozone monitoring.

Harper’s actions are expected. The only tree he ever hugged was an oak when he was seven and playing hide and seek. Obama, on the other hand, actually made promises on the environment. Wasn’t he the man who was going to bring science back into environmental policy? Then again, he never said that science would trump the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber unveiled what it believed to be the real dangers of the EPA's smog standards: seven million jobs could be lost and one billion in compliance costs spent by 2020. Hey Mr. President, whaddya think the American people want, jobs or clean air? Geez, when you put it that way, well, sure, jobs I guess.

As to Harper, he’s ending funding for the network of monitoring stations in the arctic that monitor the ozone layer. Environment Canada is also going to stop maintaining its Toronto-based World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre used by researchers around the world. For those in the know about the science, these cuts are nothing short of a disaster for us being able to understand the complexity of what’s happening to our planet. For Harper, who has always been enamoured with removing information from policy, what we don’t know can’t hurt us.

If the race to the bottom is similar (after all, the main component of smog is ozone), the news cycle about these stories isn’t. Obama’s decision was big news. Certain media outlets raked Obama over hot coals (rumour has it that they’ve been getting steadily hotter during the past thirty years). Keith Olbermann went ballistic, editorials appeared in major paper condemning the President’s action, the decision mattered. In Canada, Harper’s actions hardly saw the light of day.

Environment Canada? There will be more cuts to come. Harper may have come around and agreed there’s global warming, but hey, if we lose the ability to measure it, who can be sure in what direction it’s trending. Years from now Environment Canada might be one guy with a thermometer who sticks his wet finger into the wind and gives us the weather report.