Behave Yourself!

photo credit:

Today we launced our “Gracias Por Nada” campaign with the Canadian Youth Delegation in Ottawa and Cancun. Gracias Por Nada is a campaign by the mock “Canadian Alliance of Petroleum Peddlers” to thank delegates at COP 16 for doing nothing to tackle global warming (www.graciaspornada.org).  Being here in Cancun, I, as a rep of the Alliance, got to personally thank some of these delegates today.  This meant I was dressed in a half suit, swim shorts, and flip flops while I scoured the conference center for delegates that needed thanking.  As you can probably imagine being dressed in such a get up is a great way to meet interesting people, and in my case it was also a great way to meet some members of the UN security team.

I was fully prepared today to explain Canada’s environmental policies to any delegate, journalist, or NGO rep I ran into, though I would soon find out that I wasn’t going to need to explain anything to anyone.  I spoke with dozens (possibly more) people today and every single one of them was aware of Canada’s tar sands developments and inaction on climate change.   I talked with people from Germany, South Africa, England, France, Chile, even someone from Namibia and many more countries and not one needed anything explained to them.    To be fair most people understood that most Canadians want action on climate change, it’s just that our current federal government isn’t giving that to us. 

I am a very proud Canadian, I really do love Canada.  I grew up in the most stereotypical way a Canadian guy can grow up: Playing shinny 7 days a week on a frozen Lake Bonavista in Alberta, how do you get more Canadian than that? So it kind of hurt my sense of national pride today to hear that our inaction on climate change is so well known globally (although I can’t say I was really surprised), though I was slightly relieved to hear that people understand that Canada’s federal policies do not represent the wishes of the majority of Canadians. 

Canada’s changing international reputation was best summed up to me oddly enough by my interaction with security.  As a member of the Alliance I was thanking some delegates who were in line waiting to register and my actions garnered the interest of la seguridad.  While I was thanking some delegates I noticed a group of security heading in my direction. The head security guard sifted through my materials and realized I was from Canada.  “Canada!” he said to me with wide eyes and then pulled his wallet out from his back pocket and produced a Canadian ID card I had never seen before.  The security guard explained to me that for 12 years he and his family lived in London Ontario before moving back to their home country of Lebanon where he began to work for the UN.  Having had siblings who attended Western University we actually talked for awhile about CIAU football, a conversation I was almost certain I would not have during my time in Cancun.  He said that Canada was one of the greatest countries in the world, then held up a handout I was carrying with information about the tar sands and said “Canadians aren’t like this, they don’t want this”.  Even the security guard gets it!    He then told me to “behave myself” (although he never really mentioned what that would entail), patted me on the back and walked away. 

Over the next two weeks Canada has a chance to change the path that our international reputation is on.  At COP 16 Canada’s policies on climate change have a chance to fall in line with the wishes of the majority of Canadians who want action taken on global warming.   Here’s hoping that nobody will be saying “Gracias Por Nada” to any of the delegates come December 10^th.  

Ian Carey, Environmental Defence