They, sir, had a choice

A couple of days ago, Michael tried to claim that the Libs had no choice but to do nothing about greenhouse gas emissions through the '90s. (I for one eagerly await his blog's title change to "John Turner Is My Homeboy".)

But while he has a point that it's ludicrous for the Cons to wield the Libs' inaction against them given that Harper and company fought even the Libs' feeble moves every step of the way, it's simply wrong to claim the Libs either weren't aware of climate change as an issue, or had no ability to act sooner.

After all, Kyoto itself is merely a later-negotiated protocol to the Rio Convention on Climate Change - which was negotiated a year before the Libs first took power, and entered into force just a year after the Libs formed government. The Rio Convention didn't set any specific targets, but its developed-country participants did commit to:

adopt national policies and take corresponding measures on the mitigation of climate change, by limiting its anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and protecting and enhancing its greenhouse gas sinks and reservoirs. These policies and measures will demonstrate that developed countries are taking the lead in modifying longer-term trends in anthropogenic emissions consistent with the objective of the Convention, recognizing that the return by the end of the present decade to earlier levels of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol would contribute to such modification...

Which, if the Libs needed any international justification to act, should have offered a fairly strong suggestion as to where the world then planned to go (before getting sidetracked by the likes of Chretien).

In the wake of this convention, the Libs gave greenhouse gas emission reductions a place in their greatest work of fiction - which explains in large part some environmentalists' rightful disillusionment with the Libs by the middle of the '90s.

But then, says Michael, didn't the Libs face a political imperative to move to the right and follow Reform's lead in battling the budget above all other priorities? To which one can only say: of course not. The Libs themselves highlighted their commitment to fighting climate change within days of the opening of Parliament in 1994 - and it surely can't be to the Libs' credit as leaders if they either managed to completely forget the issue, or considered it unimportant enough not to be worth acting on.

What's more, even if the view of opposition parties is taken into account, that's no particular excuse for the Libs' inaction. After all, Chretien's government faced criticism for its inaction even in its first term - indicating that there would always have been at least some support for action against emissions.

Indeed, after the 1993 federal election the total number of MPs from the Bloc and NDP combined (reflecting the opposition parties in favour of action) was greater than that from Reform and the PCs combined (those generally opposed, though I presume some PCs would also have lined up in favour). And even in 1997 and 2000, the opposition voices in favour of action would never have been strongly outweighed by those opposed.

Finally, even if one assumes that the deficit had to be tackled first and alone above all other issues, there's also that small matter of what the Libs made their top priority once the deficit was nothing but a distant memory. Hint: It wasn't investing in emission reductions.

In sum, the Libs indeed had a choice. And it's because of their broken promises and failed leadership that we're now debating whether it's too late to reach our domestic targets under Kyoto (which was seen by some to make for an insufficient cut in emissions all along), rather than having room to spare and emission credits to sell based on their following through.