Published 10 December 2011 in the Winnipeg Free Press:Fools Rule: Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change
By William Marsden
Knopf Canada, 325 pages, $30
Reviewed by Mike Stimpson
One conclusion to be drawn from Montreal journalist William Marsden's new book is that this year's federal election was another setback in the fight against global warming.
The May 2 vote's outcome was a majority in Parliament for a Conservative party that is rife with "climate change deniers" and beholden to oil companies.
Fools Rule is a well-researched, highly readable followup to Marsden's 2007 book about Alberta's oil sector, Stupid to the Last Drop.
He makes clear in Fools Rule's first chapters that the change from Liberal to Conservative government in 2006 altered Canada's role in climate talks for the worse.
As Canada's Liberal environment minister in 2005, Stephane Dion went the extra mile to get a diplomatic breakthrough in Montreal that brought the United States back to negotiations.
The present government, by contrast, has allied itself with countries that stonewall on proposals for curbing emissions of the "greenhouse gases" that are driving temperatures upward.
Now that the Conservatives have a majority, we can expect a still more negative approach.
This book gives plenty of colour on climate change diplomacy and how it has gone off the rails and been almost completely unproductive with each international summit.
Marsden describes climate-change talks as a "clumsy tango" of dance partners working at odds with each other.
Many countries have been sincerely striving for global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but powerful countries have thwarted those efforts.
Canada was among the countries trying to keep the 2009 Copenhagen summit from reaching an effective pact.
Those countries largely succeeded, and the next year's conference in Cancun, Mexico, was a shambles as well.
Canada's economic interests as a petroleum exporter have led it away from doing the right thing, says Marsden, and it's hard to disagree with that assessment.
One need only consider Ottawa's recent stumping for the Keystone XL pipeline to see how oil money trumps environment in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet.
Marsden makes an interesting point about how "social trap" theory applies here.
He sees the failure of climate-change talks as an expression of how people often will "pursue short-term gain" even when they know their actions will hurt everyone in the long term.
In Canada's case, the pursuit of oil profits is overcoming the long-term interest of ensuring a livable planet for future generations.
Another interesting observation is that those who are most ignorant about the science of climate change are among the most cocksure about being right. As Marsden pithily puts it, "stupidity breeds unbridled confidence."
He despairs that traditional diplomatic processes simply will not resolve this issue, and suggests the answer may lie in getting scientists, economists and other non-diplomats and non-politicians to produce a plan of action.
That seems unlikely, however. Which leaves the reader feeling a bit gloomier about the future.
