The period of consequences is here

A lot has been made the last few days about Elizabeth May's puzzling comments about how CNG's approach to the environment is like Neville Chamberlain appeasing the Nazis in the run-up to World War II -- and how the lack of inaction led to the war and the Holocaust.

Thrown into this is the phrase that Al Gore has often used to make his point, how Churchill attacked the government of the day for its lack of war preparation fully three years before the battle started with the following phrase on November 12, 1936:

"The Government simply cannot make up their minds, or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. So we go on preparing more months and years - precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain - for the locusts to eat ... They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences."

To be accurate, the phrase was mainly directed at Stanley Baldwin and not Neville Chamberlain, for Chamberlain wasn't elevated to the Prime Ministership until six months later -- although to be fair Baldwin at the time had problems of his own, dealing with how to dispose of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. But Chamberlain was Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Finance Minister. He had a duty to make sure the money was made available to provide for the gathering storm and he didn't. The UK's air force was woefully unprepared as Churchill repeatedly pointed out but no one listened to him. Selling out Czechoslovakia two years later made things only worse and not better, as Chamberlain would painfully discover barely twelve months following.

Is there therefore a moral equivalency between the Holocaust and environmental degradation? No, absolutely not. The Shoah was sui generis, without equal before or since in its size, scope and execution. The comparison was definitely inappropriate and I among others wish May would have chosen better words. (And Gore is probably just as guilty for implying an equivalency although he's never as far as I know made it directly.)

But separate the Nazi component from the rest of May's thesis. Is she fundamentally correct in her point that we are entering a period of consequences? Actually we already have. The Far North is the laboratory for the changes, with thunderstorms where there once were none, polar bears swimming for long distances to find ice floes and sunlight breaking the winter night weeks earlier than before thanks to the refraction of light from down South because of all the pollution that winds up there.

Down here in the South, the signs are everywhere too: Smog alerts in the dead cold of February. Birds nesting earlier and for shorter periods not giving their chicks a chance to develop properly. Squirrels running around neighbourhoods every week instead of just in the spring and fall. A transition from winter to summer and back again with no real spring or fall. These have all happened in my lifetime to date of just 34 years and some months.

One would normally expect a mild winter every six to seven years and a cool summer every so often also. Now we never know what we're going to get from one year to the next. In a part of the world that is partly dependent on the tender fruit and viticulture industries predictable precipitation is vital -- and the awards we're winning year after year are now threatened by global warming because a drought one year can be followed by torrential and ceaseless rain the next. Our strong network here of conservation areas and flood control prevents disasters of the scale like Red River ten years ago, but there are still the odd sewer backups on really bad days and they aren't pretty.

When it comes down to it, this isn't about economics but about morality. One should speak freely (as May did) but fully expect the consequences if the analogy is faulty. It continues to amaze me that the very people who oppose tougher controls (going instead for "intensity targets" as CNG has chosen to do) are the same people who take the Bible literally. Yet, as I have noted on several opportunities here, they have seemed to skip over the prophecy of Hosea 8:7 that "As they have sown the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind." I remain convinced there is a direct tie between the total lack of fuel economy standards in the States (frozen since the 1970s) and the unrelenting sales of SUVs in the States during the early part of this century which played a part in Hurricane Katrina.

Why? Because if Bible prophecy is inerrant, the storm that hit New Orleans should have been a Category 1, not 4 or 5.

The period of consequences is here. We should keep saying that. But mix in Hitler and the argument is totally lost. Not impressed, Liz.

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