Phendrana Drifts

I just got back from breakfast with Premier Ed Stelmach, and boy am I pumped. Premier Stelmach spoke about many things, including dealing with growth, innovation and making all-party and public legislative committees, but he also spent a good deal of time talking about a subject that is increasingly meaning a lot to me, the environment.

And he hit upon something that leads me to the conclusion that Alberta and Canada's right-of-centre parties are the ones for the task of improving our environment. Taking action on climate change and other core environmental issues is going to take two things, individual choice and personal responsibility. Making a real difference is going to take more than the state shutting down the economy and using the heavy hand of legislation to force behaviour change. Why? Because it is not industry alone, or even industry principally who is wreaking havoc, it is you and me. And what is needed to make us change our behaviour is leadership rather the application of brute power.

Embracing the conservation and proper stewardship of our environment is a natural fit for any small-c conservative party. When I think of environmental leaders I think of Brian Mulroney here in Canada or Theodore Roosevelt and (*gasp*) Richard Nixon in the United States. Getting there for them did not require any drastic departure from their conservative roots, but embracing the values that led them to office that were at their core conservative values - protecting the environment as a place where families shared their experiences and where children could be children and where food could be grown and cultivated.

Back to my breakfast with Premier Stelmach, who expressed similar notions of the importance of the environment, but emphasized there would be no easy solution.

The reality is that the government will not do this for us. They can't. Look at the Government of Alberta - who uses green power where ever possible and have made their operations as environmentally-friendly as possible. And while industry and the energy sector will certainly have an important role to play, I know the heaviest lifting will be done by individuals. Some of us will stop driving to work everyday (or never start, like me). Some of us will supplement our power usage with solar power. Some of us will become vegetarian because it is has such a lower impact on the land (but not me, as I really love meat - but I'm far more vegetarian now than ever before). Pitching former-Vice President Al Gore's site, climatecrisis.org, you can find dozens of ideas on just reducing your carbon emissions.

The point is not everyone is going to be forced to do all of those things, because that isn't going to work - but we all have to do something. We will all have to change how we live in some way. And we are going to need leadership from our leaders, not heavy handed legislation for just one industry (or all industry, exempting individuals). Who best to do this? Well, obviously I think Ed Stelmach is the choice, and I hope Stephen Harper does the same with his plan on climate change to the House of Commons.

Labels: alberta politics, environment, federal politics

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