Inconvenient timing

Canadians’ affection for the environment has often been fickle come election time. And the moment for Stéphane Dion’s green gamble may already have passed.

Source: The Ottawa Citizen, Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Jonathan Malloy, Citizen Special

It can be very hard to predict public attitudes to the environment. Just ask the Detroit car companies. For the last few years, even while green enthusiasm rose along with gas prices, consumers kept buying SUVs and other gas guzzlers, seemingly against all self-interest. This has rapidly changed in the last year, but it’s more about the hard economic forces of astronomical gas prices and looming recession, not nice green feelings. It’s the economy, not the environment, and that’s good news for the Conservative strategy.

One of the best headlines I’ve seen from The Onion’s satirical news site read: “98 Percent of U.S. Commuters Favour Public Transportation For Others.” In other words, we all care for the environment, unless it’s inconvenient. We can perhaps add the more than 10 per cent of Canadians who regularly tell pollsters they will vote for the Green party, even though they haven’t reached half that number in an actual election.

We all love being green in theory, but often not in practice. This is Mr. Harper’s calculation, and Mr. Dion’s gamble. The “Green Shift” platform is supposedly revenue-neutral and promises all sorts of economic benefits, but it’s up to voters to decide if it’s ultimately too … well, inconvenient.

Unfortunately for Mr. Dion, we may once again be fading in our environmental enthusiasm, and he may have missed his alternatively fuelled bandwagon.

Jonathan Malloy is a professor of political science at Carleton University.