Prime Minister Harper, Turn Off Your Lights

With Earth Hour just a few days away, I wrote the op-ed below that the The Toronto Star has today (www.thestar.com/comment/article/607658). If you agree with me, and want to ask the Prime Minister directly to power down for Earth Hour, why not drop him a line at pm@pm.gc.ca. Thank you.

Prime Minister Harper, Turn Off Your Lights

Last year on March 29 at 8:00 pm, millions of Canadians joined hundreds of millions more around the world in turning off their power for sixty minutes to mark Earth Hour.

At 24 Sussex Drive, the home of our Prime Minister, the lights were famously, or rather infamously, left on.

Whether this was the act of a neglectful manager or an agent provocateur is irrelevant. What it did clearly illustrate was a Prime Minister sadly out of touch with ordinary Canadians and their concerns about climate change and the future of the planet.

In many neighbourhoods this concern – and corresponding commitment to change – went beyond an hour at home in the dark. Many families gathered for candlelight walks, attended a special service at their place of worship or participated in events in civic squares.

This year in my own community in Toronto, various grassroots resident and business groups are working together to organize a numbers of events around Earth Hour, including three candlelight walks, a bike ride and a town hall meeting. These events all symbolize public efforts to draw attention to the urgency of our environmental challenges.

While Canadians from across the country are taking individual action, imagine how much more we could achieve at home – and contribute abroad – with engaged, active leadership from the Prime Minister.

Canada has an important role to play in global discussions over climate change and we are well positioned to do so. Canada has a long history of activism on international policies – from the creation of peacekeeping and the International Criminal Court to the banning of land mines. We are also per capita one of the world’s worst carbon polluters.

But before we can speak credibly to the world, we must talk honestly with each other. We should be under no illusions as to how difficult this conversation will be.

Pursuing meaningful action on climate change presents Canada with unique policy challenges. Consider that ours is a resource driven, advanced economy. Our population is spread sparsely across a large land mass. Our winters are (for now) long and cold. And one of the greatest contributors to our oversized carbon footprint – oil – is also the source of regional resentment and political risk.

But surely this is the job of the Prime Minister – to initiate, lead and facilitate national conversations on complex, sensitive and urgent issues. We should also expect him to be capable of highlighting our unlimited possibilities rather than our current constraints, and be willing to appeal to our more hopeful and generous selves to enable change.

Prime Minister Harper could use his leadership position to offer specific signals to Canadians that he shares our concerns on climate change, including by:

• Fostering a culture of conservation – The federal government could lead a conservation revolution by launching a public education campaign to highlight how small measures to reduce energy and water usage can have major financial and environmental benefits.

• Committing to science – Canada deserves a government that embraces, not ignores the scientific evidence on climate change and its causes. Just as important, the government owes it to Canadians to provide, not suppress, new information that will encourage us to act. Finally, we need leadership that refuses to cling to false hopes of unproven technologies in an attempt to maintain the status quo.

• Forging a national consensus – If ever there was an issue that called for a united, not fragmented, response to an issue, it is the environment. What happens on the tar sands in Alberta or off the coast of Newfoundland affects the entire country. The Prime Minister should launch an intergovernmental strategy by hosting a First Ministers Conference on the environment and holding it in public.

In choosing to power down for Earth Hour, Canadians are sending a message to government that we see ourselves as more than just consumers of energy, more than just participants in the national economy – we are citizens of this world, guardians of this planet and we are prepared to act on climate change.

We want to see the federal government act too. Even more than specific policies, we are looking for a Prime Minister who demonstrates that he “gets it” on climate change. But if, on March 28 the lights are still on at 24 Sussex, he doesn’t.