Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, June 01, 2012

Environmental cuts raise troubling questions

It might or might not make much difference to the quality of the air Canadians breathe, but the disbanding of a team of scientists that monitors air pollution raises troubling doubts about the federal government’s priorities, and with whom its interests lie.

It took an investigation by Postmedia News and the leak of a series of documents to reveal that as part of its budget trimming through public-service cuts, the government plans to break up a team of Environment Canada smokestack specialists. These have hitherto worked closely with industry and enforcement officers to crack down on toxic pollution that kills thousands of Canadians each year.

The Ottawa-based group of seven specialists has been told that its current role is to be eliminated over the coming year. That role has consisted of travelling the country to measure emissions and analyze data so as to advise industries on emission reduction or, failing persuasion, provide evidence for enforcement officers to lay charges against excess polluters.

In past years, the team’s research has been used in the development of pollution standards, the assessment of pollution sources and the measurement of pollution-reduction technologies. The team would monitor pollution sources, including cancer-causing emissions from installations such as hospital incinerators, crematoriums, boilers, smelting furnaces, landfills and coal-fired power-generating stations.

While the federal Environment Department maintains that the disbanding of the team will not affect its ability to conduct research into and monitoring of pollution, independent experts beg to differ. They maintain that the cuts to the program jeopardize effective pollution monitoring in general, and specifically an initiative to create a neutral, science-based monitoring plan for the Alberta oilsands. In the process, it is suggested, Canada’s already tarnished environmental reputation will be further besmirched.

More serious than the threat to Canada’s reputation by reducing the capacity for pollution monitoring is the potential threat to Canadians’ health and life expectancy.

The latest available figures on the health effects of air pollution hold that in 2008 roughly 21,000 Canadians, most of them seniors, died prematurely from a combination of short- and long-term exposure to air pollution. A report by the Canadian Medical Association that year estimated that with the aging of the population, that number is likely to grow by more than 80 per cent to nearly 40,000 by 2031.

The same report estimated that air pollution cost the economy and the health-care system $8 billion, a figure bound to increase sharply as well if measures are not taken to substantially curb health-threatening emissions.

However, progress on that front appears to be lagging. The government previously pledged to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020 and to halve industrial air pollutants by 2015. These emissions are being somewhat reduced, but not by enough to meet targets previously set.

This latest cut to an environmental program follows others in the wake of this spring’s federal budget, and unfortunately feeds suspicions that the government’s environmental policy is ideologically skewed in favour of industrial development and resource extraction with insufficient care for environmental concerns. Other cuts that suggest this bent are the elimination of the National Round Table on the Environment, the curbing of environmental-impact reviews for industrial projects, and the axing of the EcoENERGY program for retrofitting homes and office buildings to make them more environmentally friendly.

The government seems to be operating on the premise that environmental concerns are secondary to economic concerns for Canadians. This is perhaps true on the whole, but the government’s decreasing popularity and the rise of the more environmentally friendly New Democratic Party to equal standing in the polls suggests Canadians do care deeply about environmental matters.

And they will care even more acutely if it becomes apparent that government neglect on air pollution is having a measurable impact on their health.

Original Article
Source: montreal gazette
Author: Editorial

No comments:

Post a Comment