A new poll in Canada has climate change at the top of the worry list for the first time, and it's rising fast. The Globe and Mail poll puts the share of Canadians who say the environment is the most critical issue facing the country at 26 per cent, up from 12 per cent in July, and 4 per cent one year ago. To put this surprising finding in context, only 18 per cent said health care was their No. 1 concern. And health care has long ruled the top of that list.
(Terrorism got only 6 per cent and crime just 3 per cent, which might surprise Americans who consider Canada the 51st state, but isn't really all that unusual for those familiar with what passes for politics north of the 49th.)
Canadians have always considered themselves more environmentally responsible than their neighbors to the south, and although this particular source of pride is not warranted -- per capita energy use and waste production are at least comparable to American figures -- it does explain why Canada was among the first to sign the Kyoto Protocol even though the economic links with the U.S. make separate policies on such subjects theoretical at best.
But to put climate change at the top of their list of concerns can only mean one of two things: either the chronically funded Canadian health care has been fixed (not), or the specter of climate change really is beginning to scare the country. I say this is a good thing, because we should be scared. We don't have to believe the worst-case scenarios of the Stern report to be scared. We can even side with William Connelly and publicly denouce alarmist tactics. This is because the watered down findings of the next IPCC report are sufficient to warrant a massive overhaul of industrial society.
So it would appear Canadians are just joining the real world. There seems to be similar sentiments among some of the world's business leaders, as chatter at this year's Davos forum on all things economic suggests:
"We are living in a schizophrenic world," said Klaus Schwab, executive director and founder of the World Economic Forum. ... Global warming and security are the two dominant issues, Mr. Schwab said, and the initial lack of thick snow in the town that bills itself as the highest ski resort in Europe was a firm reminder that climate change is a hot topic.
...
By putting climate change at the top of the Davos 2007 agenda, the World Economic Forum has focused on the key challenge of our time," Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said on the WEF blog. "The moment to act is now. Many of those present in Davos have the power to move decisively on global emission reductions -- the world is looking to them to rise to this crucial challenge."
Compare that language with George W. Bush's throwaway first-ever State of the Union reference to global warming earlier this week.
Of course, people are, like babies, easily distracted. All it would take is another consequential terrorist attack on a western power to switch the focus back to security issues. And while even Bush seems to have realized that energy security and climate are linked -- insofar as we can kill two birds with one windmill -- I have yet to see real evidence that Canadians or transnational corporate executives have actually internalized what it will take to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Evidence of such a shift will come in the form of Canadians electing at least half a dozen members of the Green Party in the next federal election and Royal Dutch Shell spending more in one year on renewable energy that it does on oil exploration. Neither are particularly likely scenarios but they are no longer completely beyond the realm of possibility.
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