Electioneering again

Climate anxiety has entered the lexicon. For the last few years, it’s been talked about more and more in news articles, science discussions and even in spiritual care contexts.

I shrugged it off as overly sensitive people, but the shoe has dropped for me now too.

Extreme weather or one sort another everywhere all at once for the past few years has brought home what I always acknowledged intellectually but didn’t really synthesized emotionally: climate change is actually coming and it will be bad.

I feel so angry and impotent in the face of these massive systems working against my small efforts to reduce waste and burn less carbon. So I went to the climate forum for this provincial election. It felt really important just to be in the room to declare “this subject matters!”

The room had a remarkable number of grey hairs in it. This brought up terribly mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, good of them to continue to care about these issues, even as they can anticipate it won’t have a lot of impact on the lives they have left. On the other hand; for pity’s sake, you care now?! Where have you been placing your voting and advocacy power for all these years as governments stood impotently by while industry raped and pillaged the earth?

The long time talk radio host who chaired the event channelled his radio vibes: rumpled and casual in appearance; rich, melodic voice; introduced his guests by name by not identifying where they were sitting in the room. As the evening wore on, he demonstrated not only a good understanding of the topic, but even his own set of opinions, especially regarding the Dunsky report on the government's Energy Roadmap. 

He asked for and maintained a decorous event – not an easy task when you can anticipate 90% of the audience cares deeply about climate change and thinks the outgoing environment minister who is there representing his party has done an egregious job.

Said environment minister's opening speech was smooth, passionate and inspiring. Also seemed like greenwashing, fabrication, hyperbole and taking credit for other parties’ initiatives. He insisted the PCs take a “whole government approach”, including climate considerations in any decision making. His assertion that he moved more climate related motions than any other city councillor was screaming for fact-checking.

At one point, his passionate rhetoric was so divorced from reality that the room started booing, to the dismay of the moderator. The person beside me gave an excellent response to his fantasy: hearty and pointed guffaws. “You must be joking!”

(I had to laugh that directly after saying we need to let innovators innovate; the government alone can’t fix the problem, he gave an example of an innovator: the City of Selkirk. Hmm, isn’t that an example of government?)

His opponent, the environment critic from the opposition party spent a considerable amount of her time critiquing what the ruling party had done with their time in power. In some ways, this is fair, since a party should be judged on its track record, and the ones who just held power can’t be trusted to reliably report on their own accomplishments. Yet, it can also be a screen for revealing any of your own ideas. And that finger pointing away hopefully redirects any fingers that might be pointing back at you for your party’s performance in opposite – and in power before that.

The positive talking points she did have leaned heavily on references to consulting with Indigenous peoples, investing in EV technology (with more than one explicit reference to a local manufacturer) and a few passing endorsements of public transit.

What impressed me was her bringing up the negative impacts of Hydro. We need to reconcile with our past on that. It’s a significant comment from a government who built a massive transmission line and new dam up north.

She also made multiple references to partnership – to working with (instead of fighting against) other interests in the province. Politically, of course, one can’t but not name Indigenous Peoples as a key partner, but the talking points sounded genuinely aspirational (however unlikely).

Disappointingly, in the “yes or no” question section, she voted “no” on protection of peat lands. Given her promises to preserve 30% of public lands for natural biodiversity, it’s puzzling this wouldn’t rate as a priority.

The Green Party has a new leader. A Baby Boomer back-to-the-land-er and agricultural consultant, she’s not new to any game – including politics – but she has never been elected, a fact the environment minister rubbed in her face numerous times.

She was earnest and passionate, and clearly experience with agricultural aspects of the climate change conversation, and deeply concerned about the proposed sand mine that will poison a significant aquifer of rural drinking water, but her lack of experience was evident in her lack of polish as a public speaker and slightly muddy platform. I guess when you know you barely have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting even one single candidate elected, the urgency to have a well argued platform may be lower. She promised that as many Green MLAs as Manitobans will send to the Legislature will duly serve as a voice of conscience of environmental issues.

And then there was the leader of the forgotten party. Despite being the big player on the federal scene, this party has barely done better than the Greens for MLAs elected for the past decade or more. Nearly all political commentary talks about Manitoba as though we have only two parties. The party leader (one of 2? 3? elected MLAs from the party) shone above the others, in my estimation. Since he took the party reins a half dozen years ago, I’ve been impressed at how frequently he manages to get into the news and how consistently well argued and constructive his talking points are. That was clearly in evidence this evening where he was the most eloquent, the most in command of the facts under discussion, while also being the most relaxed of all the people on stage, and the only one speaking without notes.

He managed to – politely but devastatingly – undercut some of the wild assertions of the environment minister; he presented the most interesting and well developed platform talking points. He was the only one who acknowledged that all these promises have a price tag and he had a plan – I’ll let someone else assess how realistic it is – to fund them.

What impressed me most however, was his human compassion. He also spoke briefly but with intellect and empathy of the shameful not only history but present negative impacts of Hydro on Indigenous communities.

I sure hope after tonight at least folks who care about climate can stop talking as though the “let private enterprise do whatever it wants; our friends and us are getting rich; let the planet burn” party and the “we claim to care about the environment but our previous decade in power lacked the decisive action that needed to be taken then, and has gotten out of the gate this election with the most egregiously backward promise of “relief” from the gas tax” party are the only options this election. I know nobody is perfect and every political party, besides being filled with imperfect people, also operates within an imperfect system, one that is probably stacked against doing good for society in the first place, thus no party will ever be “the right one” or provide “the right” path forward, but I’d sure love to give a different party a try at making new mistakes. We’re all quite familiar with the ones the two ruling parties have been making as one after another spends a decade or more in power, becoming more complacent and self-serving as the years go on. We’ve all got our teeth set against both of them based on their record. Let’s try someone new!

I’m disappointed proportional representation had no opportunity to be discussed here. Granted, it’s not explicitly tied to climate action in any way except that it demands greater collaboration between parties simply by its structure, and it makes it far less likely governments will spend half their time undoing the things the previous party worked so hard to put in place – for good or ill!