Home Featured William Watson: If Elizabeth May and Valerie Plante don’t take climate change seriously, why should the rest of us?

William Watson: If Elizabeth May and Valerie Plante don’t take climate change seriously, why should the rest of us?

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William Watson: If Elizabeth May and Valerie Plante don’t take climate change seriously, why should the rest of us?

On the eve of the great climate strike last month, the CBC’s Adrienne Arsenault interviewed Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante, who, with Montrealers’ customary modesty about our city, styles us a true world leader in the struggle against climate change. The mayor was just back from addressing the big UN climate conference in New York where young Greta Thunberg had been the superstar attraction. Though generally sympathetic, Arsenault at one point slyly asked: “What have you given up?” “What have I given up? Hmm. That’s a good question,” the mayor responded, clearly a little gobsmacked. And that was about it in terms of an answer.

She did say she’s never had a car in her life but, oops, as mayor she now does have a car. (If you go to her website, which is powered by electricity, you can invite her to your event, which she presumably may elect to drive to, a mayor’s time being very valuable.) And then she added that she travels less, even as mayor. But she was just back from New York. And this week she’s in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, talking artificial intelligence, another area where Montreal fancies itself a world leader, and the role of cities in environmental stewardship, where, as we have established, our city shines.

Maybe Plante will bike from Amsterdam to Copenhagen. Electricity-powered Google says they are 770 km apart and biking will take her 40 hours, after which she will need a nap before her meetings. But of course the mayor didn’t get to Europe by bike. And she didn’t go by sailboat, either, as, to her credit, the puritanical Thunberg did in making her way to the big New York meeting where she scolded world leaders, including many green legends-in-their-own-minds, such as our own prime minister, for shamefully failing the planet. No, to get to Europe the mayor soared at 35,000 feet, spewing a contrail of toxins behind her, as we all do when we fly.

The point here is not that Mayor Plante is a hypocrite. She’s human. To humbug is human. No doubt she’d argue her missionary travelling is offset by the reduced emissions of every convert she makes. That would be hard to prove but, who knows? Stranger things have been true.

The point, rather, is that she’s not being honest about the very big changes she wants us all to make. In response to another question from Arsenault, she wouldn’t even commit to imposing a congestion charge on drivers into downtown Montreal (though in truth, for the time being, one isn’t needed since construction projects and the city’s legendary potholes make driving downtown Greta-Hell already). “I’m not so much at this time about adding taxes,” the mayor explained. Rather, she might set aside parts of the city to be zero-emissions spaces. We used to have red-light districts in Montreal, into which socially undesirable activity was directed. Now we’re going to have green-light districts, where the admirable stuff goes.

Humbug aside, in a world that gives up fossil fuels, as so many activists propose, how many trips to Amsterdam or Copenhagen will the average person get in a lifetime? If air travel is effectively banned, and steamships, too, crossings by sail, à la Thunberg, could come back. Sail technology has improved dramatically since the early 19th century. But it’s still going to be a five- or six-day voyage and how much will that cost, given the space, labour and supply requirements? Sure, eventually we may get electric planes, but some abolitionists want to be rid of oil and gas by 2030 or 2040. (Mayor Plante told the UN that Montreal would reduce its emissions by 55 per cent by 2030, details to come by January, she hopes.) And what will flying electric cost, when it finally does arrive?

A few days later the redoubtable Rosemary Barton got into it with Elizabeth May about the costs of the green revolution she proposes. “What do Canadians need to give up?” asked Barton, to which May replied: “Our plan doesn’t ask people to give up anything … I don’t see it as discomfort to plug in your car instead of going to a gas station … We’re not asking Canadians to take on a cost. We’re asking the federal government to show the kind of leadership that existed in the 1980s.” And she went on to talk about the chlorofluorocarbon agreement, which required banning aerosol propellants, not overturning an entire civilization.

The thing about ships, planes and personal vehicles powered by fossil fuels is that they are immensely empowering. Last month a friend and I got into a car and in roughly 12 hours transported ourselves from Montreal to Prince Edward Island, a journey that in the 19th century took several days by steamship. Yes, maybe we were acting irresponsibly from the planet’s point of view. But all across the world billions of people have got used to the unprecedented empowerment fossil fuels bring.

Politicians with plans they don’t actually announce, like Plante, or with plans that don’t ask people to give up anything, like May’s, just aren’t credible. Which leads to the following conclusion: if these people obviously don’t take climate change seriously, why should the rest of us?

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