True North

Well, Conservative Maxime Bernier really let the cat out of the bag. By concluding in La Presse that he believed there is no consensus on global warming, the former Foreign Affairs minister effectively ripped the cover off of his party's discipline enforced code of silence. That discipline was necessary because it permitted the Conservative government to communicate in double-speak to the electorate, effectively enough confusing them as to where the governing party truly stood on the issue of the environment.By speaking out against environmental alarmism, Bernier himself raised the climate change stakes to an alarmingly new level. He's was way off on this, but in a world of illusion over substance, it doesn't really matter. Opposition members say Bernier truly mirrors Stephen Harper's attitude, and environmental activists are lining up to denounce him in full. And so they should. But all this will solve little. The discovery just prior to the Copenhagen summit of emails that appeared to "rig" some of the climate change facts by environmentalists was quickly followed up with corporate sponsorships to question the entire validity of climate science itself. It was shameless and will someday be rightfully condemned, but the point is that the public is confused. The majority of Canadians still believe in the urgency of climate change but the right wing attacks have rattled their confidence. The consequences of all this couldn't be more ominous.So here's an idea put forward by the New York Times celebrated author Thomas Friedman. It one succinct column last week, he laid out what might be the best overall plan to deal with the environmental confusion.Titling his column, Global Weirding Is Here, Friedman states up front that the climate-science community is not blameless, and he's right. Knowing that the draconian forces of energy companies heavily finance "studies of climate change to conservatives who hate anything that will lead to more government regulations," the climate community should never have accepted anything other than peer-review research, But they did and we're now in this bind.The reality is that the mountains of such peer-reviewed research concerning climate change remains overwhelming, yet such contrary forces are determined to exploit this sudden opening in credibility. How do we move ahead? Friedman is cogent. Convene the very top experts from places like NASA, the best research universities and the world's most respected scientists and produce a simple 50-page report called "What We Know." It could summarize everything we know in an unimpeachable peer-reviewed fashion.Friedman wisely doesn't stop there. That same group should provide a summary of all the errors and wild exaggerations made by the climate skeptics that have absolutely nothing to do with evidence-based science and - this is vital - where such deniers get their funding. To this I would also personally add that the experts should also lay bare where the environmental community has offered certain myths and faulty science - all this just to be objective. The report should be concluded with as much haste as possible and presented to the public and policy makers so that thinking can be corrected or reaffirmed.I think we all know where this will end. Folks like Bernier never believed the science in the first place, even when it was irrefutable. There are thousands like him who would use the smallest failure to exploit the masses, largely in favour of the energy companies and ideology. The report will conclude what science has been saying all along but it will have been cleansed of the more seedy residue. It will be science, pure, irrefutable, and above all able to guide us into a more sustainable future. Ultimately, it will provide average citizens the rationale for getting back in step with the planet.Polls continue to show that voters trust scientists over politicians by a long shot. It remains politically expedient, in light of this, to ask science once more to sweep out the cobwebs, reaffirm the evidence, and provide us the rationale necessary to make the changes that must surely come. Bernier's blinders might just have unknowingly caused the action that will bring us back to True North on our compass.