“Environmental blah blah” is how retiring NDP MLA Corky Evans describes the privatization of B.C.’s waterways under the guise of addressing climate change. So-called “green” run of river hydro projects, also known as independent power projects or IPPs, divert water into a pipe several kilometres long and then into a turbine before returning it to the same watercourse downstream.

Among the over 500 streams and rivers staked by private companies so far, the Plutonic Power and General Electric Bute Inlet Project plans to divert and dam 17 streams and rivers, while constructing 445 kilometres of transmission lines, 314 kilometres of roads, and 104 bridges. Across the inlet from me, the Sea-to-Sky corridor has stakes for 110 streams and rivers.

How did this happen? The 2002 B.C. Energy Plan forbade our formerly very profitable Crown corporation B.C. Hydro from producing new sources of hydroelectricity. Further, BC Hydro will now be forced to buy energy from the new private producers at $120 megawatts per hour for which they will receive $60 in the market. Well, you know Gordo and privatization: BC Rail, BC Ferries, healthcare.

What about local opposition? Silenced in June 2006 when Campbell passed Bill 30 to retroactively abolish local zoning authority over them.

Who supports the run of river projects? You mean apart from speculators and Liberal-led astroturf orgs like BC Citizens For Green Energy? Well, there’s David Suzuki, economist Mark Jaccard, and environmental activist Tzeporah Berman who started the foundation PowerUp Canada just to promote them.

And why are we doing this again? To sell our “green” energy to the US. says Berman, through what Gordo referred to at the last PNWER summit as “electric transmission corridors.”

Coincidentally, Suzuki, Jaccard, and Berman all made media headlines in the last few days criticizing the NDP for not supporting Gordo’s “gas tax.” Not that they support Gordo, they say, just “his environmental leadership.” That would be the Gordo who gutted the BC Environment ministry and supports fish farms, the Gordo of Gateway Pacific and twin Enbridge pipelines from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat, the Gordo of expanding the oil and gas industry in the north and building more roads and bridges instead of light rail and public transit, the Gordo of offshore drilling and renewed tanker routes . . . that Gordo.

I am interested in two things in this election: environmental stewardship and increased regulation of the finance industry. Canadian financial institutions may have escaped the worst of the crash, but a thorough review of our regulatory landscape is needed right now if we are to maintain economic stability. Getting a loan doesn’t need to become difficult, but neither should credit be available to people who cannot demonstrate an obvious ability to pay back in a reasonable period of time (unless it’s a student loan). Yes, more regulation will cool our economy, like the carbon tax will, but I’d rather have a sustainable way of life for generations than be on a big party boat headed toward the falls.

We can look at bailouts of American and British financial institutions as one of the biggest shifts of wealth in human history: from the poor (taxpayers) to the rich (stockholders and the managers who have been fired — with millions of dollars of severance packages — after screwing up the global economy). Sometimes it feels like multinational corporations run the world, but every country still has the power to regulate and legislate. All over the world, politicians have been asleep at the wheel and it’s time for ours to wake up, fast, before you and I are bailing out Canadian criminal moneylenders.

Meanwhile, folks, spend your money on paying down your debt and installing a solar panel and woodburning stove. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: things are going to get tougher and tougher until we have no choice but to live more frugally and locally.

Speaking of which, we need breaks for people who would be badly hurt by the carbon tax: farmers and people in the north who depend on diesel for heat. The work of farmers is a public service masquerading as a profit enterprise and they can’t take another hit. And it’s cold in the north. There are no trees and no coal plants. Taxing northerners would be an extra hardship that they should not bear — northern life is tough enough. And they might want to think about how to wean themselves off fossil fuels.

By the way, check out the Canada Health Consumer Index posted on the CBC website and note that the information was generated by Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a think tank based out of Winnipeg. They have a interesting take on things that seems to favour adjusting society to welcome globalization (yikes), and “empowerment” of Aboriginals (which seems to mean cancelling their special rights and demand they adopt the European way of life or die). They also have a video for sale questioning the role of human activity in global warming.

Need to know more? I do. Like, for instance, why the f*ck CBC is giving these idiots air time without pointing out clearly who they are.

- Eleanor Claire

This is what the Liberal green home incentive that Stephane Dion proposes feels like to me. He is correct that most of us can reduce our energy consumption by up to 40 per cent. He is also correct that most of us are hesitant to invest in “greening” our homes because of the initial investment. So offering us up to $10,000 in interest-free loans is a fabulous incentive. We get the capital costs taken care of up front, we add value to our homes and we start realizing the benefits of those savings immediately while we pay back the loan with no interest added. Figure in the benefit to the environment and it’s a sensible, sweet deal.

Of course, the whiners in BC — where, compared to the prairies, they hardly need much heat — are the first to dive into the bitch fest. Will they take a double hit due to their new 2.3 per cent carbon tax on oil consumption? Not if Dion negotiates successfully with the provinces. And, um, not if they start taking the bus and turning down the heat.

In any case, it’s an investment in the future and a guaranteed cost savings that will pay off for as long your house stands, which is a helluva lot more benefit for a helluva a lot longer than Harper is promising.

- Eleanor Claire

Here’s the deal: these guys are in it for the money. So, how do you continue to make money if you can’t sell gas? You make sure that the mechanism that powers the car breaks down at just that profitable sweet spot where customers aren’t so pissed off that they quit purchasing your product and you still get to pocket a good profit.

The auto makers’ secret weapon is the lithium-ion battery: Zero emission (directly from the car, don’t think about the coal-powered electricity plant), but the battery is going to wear out in two or three years. Two to three years and we are back on the hook for another $10K? Aw, c’mon!

Unfortunately, keeping stupid consumers on the hook is not a new strategy. Industry can make a light bulb that won’t wear out for years and years, but we keep purchasing the ones that wear out.

But maybe we won’t be as stupid as we have been. A quick web search indicates that a California company, zevcat.com, is going to start to sell air-powered vehicles built by MDI, a Luxembourg company, in the next few years. If you have any shares in Nissan, you might want to dump ‘em when you read this: Compressed air vehicles are cheaper, go farther on a “tank,” and can be “refilled” in two or three minutes (as opposed to the five hours required for battery-powered vehicles). They go a maximum speed of 68 mph, which is not as fast as the battery-powered ones, but they cost way less: $15K to $20K for the car as opposed to $50K. In a pinch, you could probably refill with a foot pump. Imagine that: a car that goes on and on, powered by “air stations” that I would imagine could give away the air for free (making their money on snacks and coffee). Heck, maybe the air stations could be totally off the grid: run the whole shebang on solar.

Boy, that would be great. I gave up my car last year and I am not even slightly annoyed by taking the bus or riding my bike. In fact, riding my bicycle to work and back means that I have a slight chance of maintaining a reasonable ass size well into old age. (Also a reasonable ass shape, the importance of which can be reinforced with a stroll through any mall parking lot.) But every now and then I have to carry far too much, or travel far too long, for a bike to be reasonable. I would probably not purchase a $50K car at this point, addicted as I am to the convenience and stresslessness of public transit and biking, but I can absolutely imagine spending $20K on a vehicle that will take me anywhere I want to go while setting me free from the carbon-based corporations.

That will be a great day. I look forward to it — and I am going to wait to get one of those rather than spend thousands on an already-available Zenn that won’t go fast enough, takes four hours to recharge, and for a battery that is going to crap out in three to five years. But Zenn Canada deserves recognition if only for the fact that they have put pressure on Ottawa to license electric vehicles. Apparently, even though Zenn has met all requirements for low-speed vehicles, Ottawa is “reviewing the requirements.”

What requirements? That it goes fast enough? Gee, how many lives could be saved by not being able to speed? Safety? Oh, please. If we license motorcycles for the street and allow people to put their kids on ATVs, we can license electric vehicles. So what is it? A sudden drop in revenues related to oil production? Listen, Ottawa, you guys had better start planning for it because the world is going to drive electric vehicles powered by wind and sun, and that’s going to shut down those filthy tar sands. Wrap your heads around it, boys and girls. And do it fast because Canada isn’t going to be able to sustain its activities as a carbon criminal very much longer.

What do we know about Stephen Harper? Well, we know that he likes secrets. He does not like to share information. What do we hear from Ottawa? Nuthin except a river of official propaganda. His latest move is to make the job of journalists harder by closing down access to an information registry that users say helped hold the government accountable.

According to the CBC, “The Coordination of Access to Information Requests System, or CAIRS, is an electronic list of nearly every access to information request filed to federal departments and agencies.

“Originally created in 1989, it was used as an internal tool to keep track of requests and co-ordinate the government’s response between agencies to potentially sensitive information released.

“Now, users mine the database to do statistical studies, fine tune phrasing on new requests and discover obscure documents — often using the information against the government.”

But not any more. Apparently Harper believes that the role of journalists is merely to forward his propaganda to you and me. What he might not realize is that those Canadian journalists who remain will be all that more dedicated to bringing him down.

After all, tattling on bad guys is good sport. I like it, and I do it as often as I can. For instance, the latest national fuss is over a handful of ducks that did not survive landing in a tailings pond in the tar sands. But I told you, not to mention a canvasser from the NDP, all about what’s being done to northern Alberta a few blog posts ago. Here, courtesy the Sierra Club, is what it looks like these days:

And this is what that area used to look like:

Tattling on the people who are responsible for this, including Mr. Harper, is a pleasure.

Unfathomable amounts of water are used in tar sands processes. This previously clean water is made unfathomably dirty, and is pumped back into a gigantic natural pipeline (Athabasca River to the Slave River via Lake Athabasca to the Mackenzie to the Arctic Ocean, which is connected, by the way to the world’s oceans).

Is transforming the world into a toxic waste dump okay with us? Apparently the PM thinks so. In fact, the only reason Harper wants to assert Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic is to grab the oil, and make things even worse. I used to think Canadian sovereignty of the Arctic was important. Now I think the Europeans are better equipped to protect it, as Canada has become a environmental hooligan.

It is difficult to focus on the tedious housekeeping of running a democracy when corporate criminals bulldoze the northern forest and obliterate perhaps our best chance at surviving global warming. Does nobody comprehend that we need vast expanses of trees to absorb carbon dioxide? Does anybody wonder if we even have the right to use all the carbon fuel, or perhaps that our children and grandchildren might need a bit for their essential functions? This is supposedly the function of democracy: to make wise, coordinated decisions and administer them fairly even if it means that a few rich people don’t get richer or, god forbid, take the bus.

But Canadians are doing nothing — not even those things we are capable of doing. Can we save the rainforest? Realistically, no. Can we inhibit the exponential use of carbon-based fuels in China and India? Again, not a chance. However, the power to insist on environmental responsibility in the tar sands lies entirely with us. Holding gigantic energy companies’ feet to the fire is something we can do, ought to do, and are simply not doing.

Even those provinces with the gonads to take a stand are taking a step backward. PEI, once a leader in refusing to create refuse, now allows non-refillable containers. Shame. But not nearly as shameful as the arseholes who dumped oil off the Newfoundland coast. A bit of social action might be in order: I suggest that we write to the Mediterranean Shipping Company to let them know what we think.

Here’s what I wrote:

“Dumping oil off our coast is easy. So is finding a list of your customers and staging a direct action campaign to stop companies from doing business with you. I think your clients may find it easier to hire another shipping company than lose customers all over the world.

“You might want to apologize quickly and publicly, and you might want to spend a lot of money cleaning up the mess you made. You might want to do this quickly, as we all have Facebook and can easily suggest to our friends all over the world that we must not buy from your customers. Up to you.”

Actually, I think I’ll tell my friends all over the world regardless. Sometimes being a tattletale is just plain fun.

I am not a fan of Stephen Harper by any measure but we have to acknowledge that he conducted himself fairly well this week. He did not shy from telling Canadians that economic times are going to get tougher. He commended Manley’s report on Afghanistan without leaping to agree with it, asserting to Canadians that he would do the right thing.

I have no confidence, though, that Harper has a comprehensive understanding of how tough the tough times ahead are going to be. I would prefer that he warn Canadians that we have to completely reorder our society and economy in order to survive a post-carbon world. He has not done that and he should, even if it draws boos and boo-hoos from the business community.

How tough will things get? Those of us old enough to have heard Depression stories from our grandparents and parents would do well to remember them in detail. We can find indicators in those stories of what we might expect. My grandmother did not taste milk for ten years, sewed all the family’s clothes and sent her son, my father, to hunt meat for the evening meal. My father remembers being rationed two shotguns shells into his 10-year-old palm and being told to “make them count.” The occasional roast of beef was made to last all week from a glory of a Sunday meal through sandwiches and hearty soup. My grandfather was sometimes paid for his work as a mechanic in bags of potatoes because few in the neighbourhood had any money to spare. In the last years of her life, my grandmother still washed plastic bags and hung them to dry on the clothesline. She never learned to drive because she would never own a car.

That is the kind of lifestyle we have to get ready for. Earlier this week I mentioned to family members that they might want to sell their expensive cars now, while they were still worth something, especially if they were still paying for them. I was laughed down. I don’t think they’ll be laughing a few years from now.

We have to keep in mind that our current lifestyle is not typical in history or currently on the planet. The Depression occurred in living memory and is far more typical of human lifestyle than the we one we enjoy now. In fact, our current affluence happens only rarely and usually right before a significant political or economic crisis. To survive, we will have to accept a radically different lifestyle. If we don’t do this together, in an orderly way with supportive public policy, we will still live a radically different lifestyle but likely in an atmosphere of panic and chaos.

Harper did make one wrong step this week. Bouncing the torture controversy back to the Canadian military despite energetic criticism from the opposition was Harper’s mistake of the week. He should demand a full investigation into the controversy surrounding Canada’s transfer of detainees into the hands of Afghan torturers, even as Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Union ramp up their lawsuits against the federal government. There are two problems with this situation. First, the Canadian military must take proactive measures to protect detainees before torture becomes a possibility. Surely they would expect Afghans to have different standards and plan accordingly. It is not sufficient only to react. Secondly, the federal government cannot bounce this back to the military. This is a question of oversight. The Canadian military is not independent. It is responsible to the federal government and the federal government must demand accountability. Where that accountability breaks down, the correct response is swift and decisive discipline, not finger-pointing.

Canada’s credibility as a civilized people is badly damaged when we fail to protect military prisoners. Combined with our whimpering apology of last week to two known torturers — Israel and the U.S. — Canada looks like an errand boy of the barbarians.

That said, Harper’s language has been strong, solid, and displayed the leadership qualities that will inspire voters to back him simply because they’re nervous. I hope the opposition — whose policies I am more inclined toward — will find a confident tone before the next federal election.

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

And the British followed through.

By embarrassing contrast, Stephen Harper came home from Bali and snivelled to us about the sacrifices that will be required to save the planet. Here is a quote from his year-end interview with CanWest:

“I know that whatever we do, the radical edge of the environmental movement that gets most of the press will not think it’s enough. And I also know that as soon as we impose costs on the economy — and there is no way of making progress without some short-term costs — that others, industry and others, will complain we’re going too far. So I think the talk will start to turn to where we’re maybe doing too much, but it has to be done, and that’s the path we’re on.”

How inspiring. I feel so honourable, so passionate in my convictions, so unified with my fellow Canadians in sacrificing my unbelievably elevated and entirely unearned standard of living for the sake of the planet and the creatures upon it.

I mean, really, is this what he thinks of us? You and me? That all we care about is gobbling up as much comfort and capital as we can while we can, screw everything and everybody else? He’s wrong. I’m ready to do better than that. And I think you are, too. Our lives won’t be quite the same but we’ll probably get a bit more exercise, lose some weight, save up for things instead of purchasing on impulse. It won’t be so bad. At least nobody will be dropping bombs on us. At least we won’t have to kiss our 18-year old children goodbye and send them to die across the Atlantic in the mud.

Yeah, I think we can handle that, Mr. Harper. No matter what you think of us, we are not actually a bunch of crybabies. There’s an iron will under this flab.

To be fair, Stephen Harper is dead right that India and China should also be held to restrictions on emissions. It isn’t fair that they are not going to get their shot at carbon-based industrialization, and that sucks for them, but fairness is not the point. Survival is. And we’re walking an environmental tightrope. For species like polar bears, and smaller plants and animals whose suffering and demise is not so dramatic, it is too late. Maybe it’s too late for us, too, and we just don’t know it.

And he is also dead right that no government has tackled global warming before. As he said, “The reason no government has done this before — federal, provincial, or municipal — is there is no way to do this without imposing costs on our economy in the short term. That’s why all previous governments have talked a great game and shied away from it.”

That is exactly right. But we can’t get away with it any longer, so it’s time for the back to straighten, the chin to go up, and the snivelling to stop.

There are some evils that will always be with us, like crime and natural catastrophe. We will always have to address earthquakes and tornados, the tomfoolery of knuckleheads, and occasional desperate acts of the insane. But there are certain outcomes that we cannot accept half-measures on. Like, duh, like environmental protection and ecological health.

We are such assholes, really. Everybody in the western world knows perfectly well that developing the tar sands in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan will increase greenhouse gases, decimate the northern forest that might otherwise scrub our dirty air, and transform every little Arctic fox and moose into an ambling toxic waste site. We know this perfectly well and yet we allow it to continue. Why? Because we want to maintain our elite lifestyle. We don’t even want to take the bus. We don’t want to spend $1,500 on a solar panel for the roof. We certainly do not want to reduce consumption.

This is selfishness. If we do not shape up, we consign not only ourselves but all the poor folks on the planet who never had a say in the matter to a miserable future. A lot of Canadians might even be okay, but the folks living in coastal Asia and Africa — many of whom ride a bike to work and don’t have electricity — will watch helpless as their homes submerge and their children starve. And, if we have not changed our lifestyle and our voting habits, this will be our fault.

This is not rocket science. So I wonder what we’re doing. Are we placated by meaningless actions? Are we that stupid? I think so. Regard, for instance, the inexplicable popularity of two women who were generally irrelevant to the tens of thousands of innocent people who perish every day because we refuse to share wealth more equitably: Mother Teresa and Princess Diana. Both were icons of compassion. We adored them. But neither challenged the system that created the suffering of innocents in the first place. Neither affected outcomes.

Both of them would have done better to emulate the Archbishop of Brazil Dom Helder Camara, who famously said: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they have no food they call me a communist.”

I guess Princess Diana preferred popularity. I guess Mother Teresa preferred sainthood. And I guess we prefer to keep our unearned advantage, sliding excessive consumption down our throats with a condiment of do-gooding pudding. We will do a few things: recycle, reduce a bit, buy a hybrid — but we are satisfied with these half measures. We don’t keep our eyes on the outcome we need.

We have got to stop applauding empty gestures; we must make the failure to achieve our outcomes very unpopular. This will require us to participate in our democracy. We have to tell our politicians — elected and those who intend to stand for election — that we demand measurable goals that will achieve the outcomes we care about.

For myself, I am going to tell my municipal council to insist that the electricity company gives me credit for the power I create from solar panels on my roof. Then I am going to insist that the provincial government give me a rebate for buying solar panels. Then I am going to buy the solar panels. I gave up my car last year (it was not that painful) so I ought to be able to afford it. Then I am going to write a letter to my MLA and MP — and the opposition parties — telling them that I am going to vote for whoever manages oil sands development in the following ways:

1) I want baseline toxicology studies on water, air, and lots of different wildlife, and a study every year after that. I want the energy companies to pay for them. If the toxic levels go up, they get shut down. Not fined — shut down. That ought to get their attention.

2) I want weekly aerial photographs of the entire oil sands leases published in paid advertising in local media every week. Just because people ought to see for themselves what is being done.

3) I want the standards for environmental reclamation to be improved. Twenty years after energy activity ceases, neither I nor a bevy of scientists ought to be able to tell anything happened there.

4) For every acre of land developed in Canada, the energy company should purchase another acre somewhere in the world, restore its ecological integrity, and sign it over to a reputable international ecological protection organization for permanent preservation. And the energy company should pay for that, too.

These are my demands and that is what I am going to vote for, even if I have to vote for the guys who shave their heads and levitate. I will not settle for the Mother Teresas and the Princess Dianas. I don’t care how nice they are or how nice they look. I need outcomes.

(A brief aside: would the granola freaks be so much worse than the parade of goofs we have tolerated recently? And here’s the outcome I hope for in this latest scandal: Brian Mulroney, emperor of goofs, behind bars. Of course, I want the criminal justice system to do its thing but — if Brian is guilty — I will be mightily peeved if they guy gets away with no jail time as well as the cool two million he received as a settlement after his name was supposedly besmirched during the 1995 investigation into the sale of Airbus jets to Air Canada.)

Back to the point: if we think we can stop killing the planet without pain, we’re nuts. So the people we need to vote for will:

1) Raise your income taxes to make up for the all the royalties we don’t get so that our social welfare net keeps working,
2) levy a huge tax on gasoline,
3) if your business depends on carbon fuel, put you out of business,
4) throw us into a serious economic depression,
5) totally reorganize our economy, and
6) do a lot more scary stuff that we cannot predict.

So we will have decisions to make. Will we be satisfied with lip service? Will we discredit the politicians who have the guts to tell us the truth? Will we vote for people who promise to reduce our standard of living and thin our wallets?

They say that citizens get the government they deserve. But I guess so will all the people who never got to vote, but who will nevertheless watch the water rise.

My daughter spotted a sign on a big pickup as we drove home the other day. “Bad Ass Truck” it read. “Look, Mom,” she said. “That truck says Bad — [she paused, not wanting to use a naughty word] — you know, like ‘donkey’ — Truck.”

The sign was right, though; it was a Bad Ass Truck. And I knew just how its driver felt.

Every week, I hop back and forth from an inconspicuous black Honda Accord to a screaming red, Dodge Dakota four-door, depending on the family driving schedule. And right from the day we bought that truck, something changed inside me.

It was my first truck. I’d refused to buy a van because I refused to look that domesticated. Instead, I conceded to a gas-guzzling B.A.T. Each side mirror looked as big as my car. And backing up? I felt like I was a trucker in a semi. The six-seater cab was a challenge, too. With six adults shoe-horned in, most larger than 5′4″ me — let’s just say it’s nice and personal.

But the first four-way intersection I got to on my inaugural truck driver voyage made it all worthwhile. Despite being in the big red truck, I drove at first like a little car driver: I slowed to a stop, and obediently waited for the other two cars to go. They wouldn’t. I sat patiently. Finally one of the drivers, a man, motioned for me to go. Was that fear in his face? I shook my head, and motioned for him to go. Head lowered, he finally went. What was wrong with people?

I looked over at the other driver, a woman who had also arrived ahead of me, and she nodded for me to go. Shrugging, I did so. The second four-way stop, another driver and I arrived at the same time. Immediately, the man who tied with me motioned for me to go. He was in a car. And so it went — drivers motioned for me to turn, gave me right-of-way . . . By the end of the day I felt like a demi-god: I was able to look down at most of the other traffic and I got to go first; even stray cats stayed out of my way.

The next day I drove my car. What a difference: I was back to waiting for my turn! I couldn’t find my Honda in the sea of black vehicles in the parking lot, and I almost hit a seagull when it failed to notice me. But I had changed — I had felt the power of a big truck.

I think I would’ve been happy driving into the sunset with my bad donkey truck, until my daughter’s classroom speech the other day. She wanted to talk about how bad vehicles are. As a family we’re proud that we put out our papers to be recycled each week, we reuse plastic garbage bags, we buy eggs from free range chickens. Okay, I thought. It’s good she’s globally conscious. Then she did a bit of research, and quickly the evidence piled up on the flatbed. Here’s her speech, re-recorded just for you BoB readers:

Suddenly my truck lost some shine. Her argument held weight: I hate sitting in traffic; I don’t want to contribute to global warming; I don’t like my son throwing up in the back seat all over the upholstery thanks to motion sickness; and I’m sick of the gas prices.

Come to think of it, I’m also sick of the cost of upkeep. In six months I’ve dealt with a heater core replacement, shocks replacement, flushing the transmission, and new tires. As for my Accord: it may be more globally conscious, but it’s also ancient, with the little pop-up headlights. Which means in the last six months we’re talking work on front calipers; ball joints, both sides; air conditioning; thermostat; o-ring seal for distributor; wheel-bearings; and an oil change. And that poor little car needs a lot more done: the muffler/exhaust system, the valves adjusted, the crack in windshield repaired, and the antenna replaced.

My daughter’s call to ditch the vehicles is starting to look pretty good, even having now felt the power of truck-driving. Perhaps we could downsize to one vehicle? Maybe the concession would be to keep the truck . . .

If she had her way, we’d be chugging around in a Smart Car. Which sounds quite . . . smart. Except I don’t know where her little brother would fit if we got one. Or their dad.

Tomorrow, the UN will hold a special summit that they describe as largest-ever gathering of world leaders to discuss the threat of global warming. Over 70 heads of state or government, including Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President George W. Bush, are expected to attend the one-day event that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened in the hopes of breaking a stalemate on international climate negotiations between the developed and developing countries of the world.

As it stands, the international community wants an extension to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. At the same time, a bunch of developed countries, that are directly responsible for the current pickle we are in, say that they will play ball only if everybody — China and India included — is subject to the same binding caps.

These nations have a very, very good point. India is an economic powerhouse that is perfectly capable of providing a whack of services — particularly web-based services — to the world market much, much cheaper than people in North America or Europe ever could. Just one example: parents in developed countries can hire a tutor from India to work with their children online, any time day or night, unlimited hours, for a monthly subscription fee of only $100. Take a moment to think about all the goods and services you — and your workplace — currently access via the Internet and that gives you an idea of the proportion of our economy we could lose. The effects on our economies could be devastating.

Yes, the industrialized world has grown on the back of environmental devastation. But it would be stupid to be ruled by a knee-jerk impulse to “do the right thing.” The competitive advantage is already stacked against the developed world, and partly because India and China feel perfectly happy with atrociously oppressive labour legislation. Doing the right thing on one hand might support doing a very wrong thing on the other. At the same time, we cannot let complexity paralyze the development of meaningful policies. Emilie Moorhouse, a spokesperson for the Sierra Club of Canada, reports that “. . . Canada has been extremely destructive at these negotiations and has fought to prevent any progress in terms of setting new targets in this process.”

While Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists that Canada is a leader by virtue of his government policies to slash greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, his targets are linked to growth. The more we grow, the more we pollute, and that’s why we have no solid caps. In fact, Harper’s caps allow for increases in emissions. Which is not a cap — it’s a buoy, rising as pollution does. Secretary-General Ban has called on civil society to act with urgency, and asked Greenpeace directly to mobilize public opinion.

Even Canadians who do not join organizations can engage: we can keep in mind that Canada has a much better chance of meeting Kyoto targets if we all take the bus. Worried about economic slowdown? We can spend the dollars we would have spent on cars and gas on made-in-Canada goods and services.

Meanwhile, while Iran’s claims that Canada routinely violates human rights are clearly a transparent ploy to deflect our own, similar accusations, they also happen to be true. Canada’s failure to support the rights of First Nations’ children to safety, education, access to their culture, and even clean water, is a matter of public record and a national disgrace. Our failure to protect aboriginal women from violence is abysmal. The number of aboriginal men who suffer from violence is just as incredible — and the First Nations are only one of the oppressed groups in our population. Just lately, Canada voted against a UN declaration of indigenous rights, saying that here in Canada, we balance group rights with individual rights. Only four other nations voted against the declaration — Australia, New Zealand, the US and us — all insisting that the declaration is unconstitutional. This may be true — but as a civil society, we still have to step up to address the crimes that Canada commits against certain of our citizens.

And again, context renders accusations from Iran complex. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour says she urged Iranian officials in talks in Tehran last week to ensure the right to peaceful public expression (particularly in advocating for women’s rights), and raised the subject of the execution of juveniles. Many of those executions are related to what Iran calls “immoral behavior.” Murder, rape, adultery, armed robbery, apostasy, and drug smuggling are all punishable by death under Iran’s Sharia law. Portugal’s envoy, speaking on behalf of the 27-member EU, said: “We are very concerned with the human rights situation in Iran, in particular with the rising number of executions.” Amnesty International, which says Iran has one of the highest rates of executions in the world, last week said it had recorded 210 so far this year, against 177 for all of last year.

In context, Iran’s comments are ridiculous. But we still have to grow up — and clean up our own back yard.