Gwyn Morgan is the retired founding CEO of EnCana Corp.
There was a time when matters of great global import were handled face to face by the appropriate group of national leaders. Today's formula for solving global problems calls for the assembly of a cast of thousands - civic, state, provincial and national politicians, business leaders, scientists, NGOs and an array of naive and sometimes violent demonstrators - all vying for attention from a huge media contingent. The climax of these dramas occurs when world leaders arrive for "the photo op" communiqué purporting to reflect some sort of consensus drafted by their advance negotiating teams, then make majestic sounding but vacuous speeches before flying home.
There have been many such dysfunctional spectacles in recent years past, but Copenhagen is the all-time winner of the Most Hypocritical Event award.
Here are my top five picks of the players who earned the Copenhagen affair such distinction:
1. The award for Best Actor goes to the scientists at University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) whose leaked e-mails show a pattern of remarkably unscientific advocacy and outright deception. The CRU is ground zero for the whole man-made climate change theory and is the lone custodian of key global temperature data. The fact that CRU mathematical models failed to predict temperature data which shows no warming has occurred over the past decade has clearly rattled man-made global warming icon Phil Jones, who wrote: "The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world has cooled since 1998."
These and some 800 other messages, available for all to read on the Internet, paint a picture of a conspiracy to cover up adverse data and discredit the work of those they label "global warming deniers." Yet inexplicably, the CRU scientists were able to convince the participants and media at Copenhagen that these were just innocent "out of context" exchanges.
2. The Best Apocalyptic Hubris award goes to the high priest of the man-made global warming religion, Al Gore. His assertion that "new studies" indicate polar ice caps would be completely melted as early as the summer of 2014 left the study's author scratching his head. He's not alone. Mr. Gore's flagship documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, had even the most ardent CRU/IPCC scientists cringing at the theatrical distortion of their graphs.
3. The Shame and Shakedown award goes to the G77 "developing" countries, a group that makes up over 40 per cent of global emissions, and essentially all growth in emissions. Their behaviour leaves no doubt that their Copenhagen objective is not to save the environment, but to extract cash from the "rich" countries. They argue developed countries must pay back their so called "carbon debt" built up over the two centuries since the industrial revolution began by handing over hundreds of billions of dollars, supposedly to help the G77 lower their rates of emissions growth. So the recession-beleaguered, debt-loaded West is supposed to burden its economies with impossibly ambitious emissions targets and also send cash to the very countries that refuse to accept any binding reduction targets. This includes cash-rich China and the rest of the Asian contingent who happen to be our biggest competitors for manufacturing and service jobs. And it seems par for the course that one of the spokespersons for the African contingent of the Gang of 77 is none other than Sudan's Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, under whose regime the most grievous of human abuses are taking place.
4. The Most Vilified award goes to Canada. A coalition of environmental groups presented Canada with five consecutive "fossil of the day" awards for missing our Kyoto targets by the widest margin and for developing the oil sands. The fact that Canada's population has grown by around six million people since the 1990 Kyoto base year while the populations of the other Kyoto signers Europe and Japan have stagnated is of no consequence to our accusers. Neither is the fact that annual emissions growth in China alone exceeds Canada's total annual emissions. Nor that since Canada's emissions comprise a mere 2 per cent of global emissions and the oil sands produce just 5 per cent of Canada's emissions, the oil sands a contribute one thousandth of global emissions. At Copenhagen, facts are irrelevant.
5. The Denigrate Your Own Country award goes to the environment ministers for Ontario and Quebec, along the mayor of Toronto. Ontario Environment Minister John Gerretsen and Quebec Environment Minister Line Beauchamp held a joint news conference to state the Canadian government's position is "simply not in line with what we are doing as provinces." And to the delight of anti-Canada environmental groups, Toronto Mayor David Miller accepted their "fossil of the day."
That Canada would come under international attack at Copenhagen was predictable from the beginning. What's astounding and reprehensible is that publicly elected officials from our two largest provinces would take the international stage to promote their own selfish agendas while joining in the undeserved vilification of other provinces and our country. Here in the West, we have this old-fashioned belief that, whatever disagreements we may have at home, when you're abroad you support your country. Long after the cleanup crews are done at Copenhagen, the proud people of the West will remember the arrogance and opportunism of the great Central Canadian Copenhagen betrayal.