The Bruce Report

My colleague, John Risley, who writes a column for Atlantic Business magazine (as I do), is an indisputably smart and accomplished guy. His vigorous, unapologetic stand on a wide variety of issues is a refreshing tonic amid the pabulum that too often passes for informed commentary these days. But when he urges us to “park the Al Gore-inspired junk science” on the subject of global warming – as he did last issue – methinks this self-styled devil’s advocate pounds his brimstone a tad too forcefully.

            What, for example, is “junk” about the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which concluded two years ago that measureable, quantifiable trends in the atmosphere, oceans, glaciers, and ice caps “now show unequivocally” that the world is warming due to human activities?

            What, exactly, is nonsensical about the world’s leading climatologists – physicists, geologists and oceanographers – reaching consensus thanks to “major advances in modelling and the collection and analysis of data” in their understanding of how people, not sun spots, are heating up the planet?

            Why should we dismiss them as a bunch of cranks and scare-mongers simply because, after six years of study, they found it “very likely that the effect of human activity since 1750 is five times greater than the effect of fluctuations in the sun’s output” and that “records from ice cores, dating back 10,000 years, show a dramatic rise in greenhouse gases” from the onset of the industrial era?

            The problem is not whether the climate is changing, but why it’s changing so predictably and in so short a span. And if the big brains at the United Nations – who, collectively, hold enough advanced degrees to wallpaper the hull of a factory trawler – say the enemy is us, then who am I to disagree?

A more interesting question is: What are we going to do about it? Or, more opportunistically: How can we do ourselves and the Earth a favour and still make a decent buck in the process?

For far too long, this fractious debate has been driven by mistrust and misunderstanding, as two powerful camps – climate-change deniers and back-to-the-garden nitwits – have camouflaged the possibilities of sustainable economic development from the rest of us. In fact, the only winners will be those who understand that environmental stewardship and industrial profiteering are not always mutually incompatible concepts; those clever entrepreneurs who perceive that exploitation need not be synonymous with degradation.

Fortunately, Atlantic Canada enjoys a surfeit of both entrepreneurs and renewable energy resources. The market for wind power, for example, is both a literal and virtual “green field” in this region. Technological advances elsewhere in the world, notably northern Europe, and a proven track record make this clean alternative to coal, oil and nuclear energy ripe for development.

Similarly, safe and reliable tidal power systems have been around for decades, providing energy to homes and industries in coastal areas along the North Sea. Meanwhile, solar farms are emerging in Russia, Brazil, South America, and the sunnier parts of the United States. Somebody’s making a pretty good living researching, developing, manufacturing, and shipping these technologies all over the world. Why not us? Why not here?

Lamentably, local governments have paid mere lip service to these opportunities. Only Prince Edward Island has crafted anything remotely resembling a strategy to monetize its steady off-shore breezes. Nova Scotia is only now dipping its toe into the tidal power pool. And, at the moment, solar energy is a gleam in almost no policy maker’s eye.

Modern industry has changed the planet’s climate. It continues to do so. These are scientific facts – as verifiable as evolution, as observable as gravity. Of course, we can argue about them until all the methane-belching bovines we breed for our supper tables come home. But this doesn’t change another fact, which is that we are rapidly depleting the very commodity on which everything in our society depends, the very substance we burn to produce the greenhouse gases that threaten us.

And while the irony may be delicious, I wonder which devil’s advocate will survive the post-industrial revolution – when the wells pumping cheap oil finally run dry – to pound his brimstone a tad too forcefully.

This column originally appeared in Atlantic Business magazine’s November-December 2009 edition. Alec Bruce won Gold in the commentary category at the 2009 Atlantic Journalism Awards for his column, “Is Atlantic Canada truly on its own?”, published in the January-February 2008 edition of Atlantic Business magazine. For the best in business journalism on Canada’s East Coast, go here: www.atlanticbusinessmagazine.com

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