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Green future within our grasp Published: December 08 2006 by Elizabeth Nickson From the highest reaches of wonkdom comes the breathless missive: "Rumors are flying that the Bush administration is planning some giant Nixon goes to China initiative on climate and energy policy to be announced at the January State of the Union speech." Breathless indeed, for if we held our breaths on that one, there would be no one left. But the reason that our own Environment Minister, the luscious pouting Rona Ambrose, looks so pale and worried these days is that she knows that something must be done. Environmental collapse is the biggest problem humanity has ever faced and history will not judge well those who fiddled while we burned. Here’s the thing. The reason that conservatives, big and small, are so against the Kyoto protocol, is that it will usher in the age of that most dreaded of creatures: the super bureaucrat. And not only a super bureaucrat, but a business-hating super bureaucrat with a vast budget, transnational power, working on a brief that few understand. This is the recipe for economic collapse. Look at the flip side of every environmental screed: consumption must go down. Everyone must shop, eat, drive, travel, renovate, party and consume less. No more shopping. As if. The world’s economy is built on shopping and the promise of more shopping next year. In the hyper-active economies of China and India, people want to shop way way more. It would take an army of Stalins to stop them. Still, concern over the environment routinely tops the list of everyone’s worries. A British Columbia poll recently found that more than 2/3rds of us think that the world we will leave to our grandchildren will be a vastly diminished place. The solution lies right underneath our collective nose. Not in government or at the U.N., or even in the head offices of Greenpeace; it lies with the business community. More particularly, in the small business community. The Restoration Economy is already topping out at $1.3 trillion (U.S) strong and growing fast. It encompasses the built and natural environments and it is a restless behemoth surging beneath the radar, ignored by the press and policy makers everywhere. Men and women of conscience and purpose, mostly in the flyover provinces and states, have invented millions of solutions. Like what? Within a stone’s throw of where I live, an acquaintance has leased the mountain tops of the Peace River district. Money has been raised, windmills have been ordered, and when all of them are installed, he will generate enough electricity for all of B.C. His last venture: a low-impact cheap technology to clean up water so efficiently he could separate out nuclear waste and make the water drinkable. I could use up a thousand pages like the one you are holding listing the others. A good green future is within our grasp. We can’t trust the Liberals to keep their larcenous hands off it. We need business-friendly Conservatives to step up and take it to the chorus.

© 2006 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.