“All I’m asking from my leader, Mr. Harper is my Prime Minister, please tell us whether or not you think human-induced climate change is real, and whether it’s serious. At least I’d like to know what our starting position is on this because Canada as a country is probably more vulnerable to climate change than any of the other industrialized nations. We’re a northern country.”
- (David Suzuki, CBC’s Power and Politics, December 16, 2009)
Not only is Stephen Harper a climate change denier, but he thinks it’s a laughing matter. In Copenhagen, will he make jokes like this one to the residents of the Polynesian island nation of Tuvalu, or the Maldives in the Indian Ocean?
• “It’ll be a lot harder for the Liberals to run their campaign of fear. In fact, they’ll have troubling explaining why it was that the [Prince Edward] Island didn’t actually sink into the Gulf of St. Lawrence after all.” (Stephen Harper, speech to the PEI PC Party, April 28, 2006) ¹
Now that Stephen Harper is visiting Copenhagen, the first step he can take is to unequivocally denounce his past statements, on record, as a climate change denier:
• In December 2006, at a news conference in the Senate foyer, Harper referred to “so-called greenhouse gases” in defence of his failed Clean Air Act. (The Toronto Star, December 21, 2006)
• “The science is still evolving [with respect to climate change.]” (Stephen Harper, Toronto Star, June 10, 2004)
• “I think these are subjects where we know a lot less than some claim we know. Climate is always changing. My suspicion is that human activities have some impact upon that but I think the jury is out on a lot of the actual specific trends.” (Stephen Harper, Interview with Frontier Centre for Public Policy, May 18, 2004)
• “I will not comment at any length about the science of this other than to say the science remains in flux and is controversial. This is not just about issues of global warming or how these gases contribute to global warming, but the very reality that there has been constant climate change in the earth’s history. We know this and quite frankly science knows very little about why over the epochs and the centuries those temperature changes have taken place in the first place.” (Stephen Harper, Hansard, December 9, 2002)
• “The relationship of carbon dioxide to global warming also involves complicated and complex science that is far from settled. It is a matter of significant debate.” (Stephen Harper, Hansard, October 24, 2002)
• “We cannot predict the weather tomorrow with absolute accuracy. We certainly cannot predict the climate 100 years from now… Models have been constructed that suggest there could well be a base line increase of about 2.5°C over 100 years. There is no particular knowledge at the moment whether that relationship has to do with natural or man-made carbon dioxide. Frankly, over the last few years we have failed to see the full rise in global temperatures that the models predict.” (Stephen Harper, Hansard, October 24, 2002)
• “[Gobal warming] is a scientific hypothesis and a controversial one.” (Stephen Harper, Toronto Star, September 5, 2002)
¹ “In PEI, more than 80 percent of the coastlines have been identified as moderately to highly sensitive to sea level rise. Highly sensitive areas include the entire north shore of PEI and parts of the urban centre of Charlottetown. Since 1911, in Charlottetown, sea level has risen about 32 cm. Accelerated by climate change, this could create substantial problems for urban infrastructure. Currently, the sea level is rising at about 3 mm each year,” Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network <http://www.c-ciarn.ca/pdf/factsheet_pei_coastal.pdf>.
