Additional fine print: yep, you too can fax the PM from the Internet. I could put some banal homily here about the value of participating in the democratic process in every way available to you, and speaking for yourself to the limit of your resources, lest apathy be the eventual undoing of our nations and of our world. I won't. You should already know this.
On the Ratification of Kyoto — A Letter to Jean Chretien1
A To the Bitter End2 production
... the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response...
— from the text of the convention of the Kyoto Protocol — see http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf.
The David Suzuki Foundation (http://www.davidsuzuki.org/) has a web-to-fax engine that allows you to fax the prime minister (with a CC to your provincial premier) to thank his government for their commitment to ratifying the Kyoto accord. On the morning following the government's ratification of the accord, I sent them a fax3, and attached the comment reproduced below.
I should note that the sentiment expressed here is somewhat toned down from the intense irritation I feel at the wilful distortions perpetuated by special interests opposed to signing the accord. Barely a step removed from certain silly nits who'd like to pretend there is no significant anthropogenic component to climate change, or at least to pretend that we're so uncertain about this that actually doing anything about it is premature, we have the modern pie-in-the-sky Utopians who seem to want to believe that tomorrow we're gonna invent the zero-emissions perpetual motion machine or something, and thus it's quite all right to keep right on driving those SUVs. The shamelessness of it all makes me cringe, plainly put. The natural question: more than a few of the people who object to signing Kyoto, and who question the solidity of the climate science are the same people who support signing their nations to trade agreements in perpetuity (besides attempting to commit future governments to fixed policies prohibiting the running of deficits) on the justification of economic models no-one in their right mind should trust for solid predictions (amuse yourself: read some of the texts that lay out the base of monetarism, and see if you can find any reference within them to empirical evidence that supports its prescriptions) — so how is it these same people get all jittery at an agreement based on science so increasingly solid?
Answer, of course, blatant hypocrisy, and the economic models probably followed rather than drove the desire to implement such policies. Apparently these folks4 aren't much for following the prescriptions of honest inquiry, rather than crafting those prescriptions to their preconceived advantage, but then, that's the human way of late, and probably an issue for a much longer rant.
Anyway. This was a letter to my nation's head of state. I therefore went easy on the vitriol, and kept it comparatively short. I'll get to the longer rant later.
The following is my addition to the Suzuki Foundation's fax on my behalf.
— introductory notes added 11 December 2002
Sir:
Adding my personal comment to this letter, I should like to say the following:
You have taken the wise course here, in my opinion, objections and concerns from certain outspoken parties notwithstanding.
It has always struck me how readily people marshal objections to any course of action they fear may go against their immediate and personal interest — how readily they can ignore the forest for the trees (if you'll pardon the expression) where it suits them. I speak here, needless to say, of lobbies for the oil industry, and for industrial interests who fear the immediate costs to their profitability, and disregard the larger issue — that the rest of us cannot much longer afford the larger costs incurred, if we allow them (and ourselves) to continue in the manner to which they are apparently now accustomed.
You know, I'm sure, as I do, that good science is and always has been honest about the degree of uncertainty in any assay of conditions, and in any prediction concerning so complex a system as our planet's atmosphere. You also know, I'm sure, as I do, that a degree of uncertainty attaches itself to anything we say about the world we observe, but again, honest scientists attempt to express the magnitude of these uncertainties as accurately as they are able. And you know, I'm sure, that as long as there are honest scientists who do this, there are interests less inclined to honesty, who will magnify to the advantage of their own interests any such uncertainty. And thus, notwithstanding the growing certainty about the significance of anthropogenic carbon to climate change, notwithstanding the weight of qualified opinion, we still have interests out there who insist upon claiming that an error bar a millimeter long is really a meter, and that the jury is out, when the jury has now long rendered their verdict, and left for the weekend at the beach (in hopes it will still be there).
I have a technical term for this sort of thing.
I call it lying. And I'm pretty damned tired of it.
Thank you for rising above this.
I do agree with critics of the accord who worry that we need more participants — particularly the growing economies who seemed so opposed to signing this time around. I also recognize there is a political dimension to the standards it sets, which diverge in part from what science in isolation might have recommended.
But again, the point is to establish a direction here. It's been said before; let me say it again: had Canada insisted upon setting its own standards, the point would have been lost at the outset: that this is an international problem, and requires international agreements for its resolution. And if we can hold ourselves in good faith to the standards the international community has set today, we establish a precedent giving greater weight to these deliberations in the future.
Someday, given this modest start, we may yet achieve what I suspect we must have to ensure a future for ourselves on this planet — a truly multilateral set of standards, to which all nations must adhere, limiting the rate at which we emit materials we identify as posing such threats.
Yes, we will pay for this too. I know this. I expect it to hurt, and possibly more than a little. But then, I suspect, it would only have hurt far worse, in not much longer, had we left it, and chased the fantasies of those who insist there are technological fixes around the corner that afford painless solutions, if we only wait a bit longer.
There will be technological solutions, I hope, that ease this for us. Certainly, we should pursue them. But this does not change the fundamental, unyielding reality that we have to cut emissions as soon as possible. And it does not trump the above argument. Again: we're going to have to support multilateral and international agreements on this. This, again, is the hard political reality, with so many nations that must eventually agree to — and enforce — standards controlling emissions.
Climates change. Environments change. Our species has endured many such changes. It seems less certain, however, given what we know observe of the rate of change we ourselves are now causing, that we would have survived this epoch so well. At the very least, it seems pretty certain it would have been a pretty bloody unpleasant business. And, sadly, may well still prove to be.
Thank you for signing our nation to an honest start at addressing this. Thank you for doing the right thing.
— AJ Milne, 11 December 2002
Notes
1Jean Chretien is the prime minister of Canada as of this writing.
2 See "Shooting the Messenger" in Nature, 12 July 2001 — the esteemed journal's lead editorial that week, on criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the National Academy of Sciences' findings on climate change with respect to the significant of anthropogenic effects. Nature's comment: that the reason the IPCC is embroiled in such controversy lies not in the validity of its processes or its findings, but in its critics' "determination to defy the facts on climate change to the bitter end."
3 Yes, strictly speaking, the Foundation's fax is crafted to thank the government for their commitment to ratifying, not to thank them for actually ratifying, which they did, as of this date. Being deeply cynical and suspicious about all such commitments, I couldn't quite bring myself to send it until I actually saw them ratify. Which probably in part defeats the whole purpose of the fax, I suppose. Except, of course, that it's one more letter letting them know the public is with them on this. Which it mostly still appears to be, as of this date, notwithstanding some frighteningly well-funded campaigns crafted by interests opposed to this.
4 In fairness, this only applies to some of these folks. I note that National Post columnist Andrew Coyne, notwithstanding solid neocon/neoliberal credentials, has written as rationally as anyone about the reality of the costs, and comes out reasonably favourable to signing — see Energy Probe's reprint at http://www.energyprobe.org/energyprobe/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=5681. Okay, Coyne, maybe, given this, I'll take another look at trade liberalization. Just for you.