Canada as bad example

Australia is in the midst of an election where climate change is one of the biggest issues. Climate change is hitting Australia hard now. Guess what country embodies the fears of many political observers?

One of Connor’s biggest fears is that the country emerges from all this political upheaval looking something like Canada has under the anti-environmental government of Conservative PM Stephen Harper.

“I look at Canada as a similar country, and it is my nightmare,” Connor said. “Australia can easily become an international pariah, we are very good at derailing international negotiations as an effective middle power and vicious defender of self interest. Some of the Coalition have been to Canada and seen how they get away with walking away from Kyoto and exploiting the tar sands.

“The transition away from fossil fuels is a very hard one culturally, socially and economically for Australia to make,” Connor continued. “We are on the knife edge of walking backwards or moving forwards in sensible way.”

Canada, nightmare.

Upcoming book from Dean Bavington

Dean Bavington is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in Environmental History at Nipissing University. I expect his first book, from University of British Columbia Press in May, to have a big impact on resource debates.

Here's the publisher's blurb:

Managed Annihilation: An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse
Dean L.Y. Bavington

The Newfoundland and Labrador cod fishery was once the most successful commercial ground fishery in the world. When it collapsed in 1992, fishermen, scholars, and scientists pointed to failures in management such as uncontrolled harvesting as likely culprits. Managed Annihilation makes the case that the idea of natural resource management itself was the problem. The collapse occurred when the fisheries were state managed and still, nearly two decades later, there is no recovery in sight. Although the collapse raised doubts among policy-makers about their ability to understand, predict, and control nature, their ultimate goal of control through management has not wavered – it has simply been transferred from wild fish to fishermen and farmed cod.

Unlike other efforts to make sense of the tragedy of the commons of the northern cod fishery and its halting recovery, Bavington calls into question the very premise of management and managerial ecology and offers a critical explanation that seeks to uncover alternatives obscured by this dominant way of relating to nature.
– Bonnie McCay, Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University