Right Hook JJ McCullough, OP Columnist Political controversy is the lifeblood of the media; this is nothing new. No matter what country you live in, reporters and pundits are always on the prowl, searching for that latest scandal, shock, or slip-up to make tomorrow’s front page. What once constituted a legitimately contro- versial act seems to be fast slipping. At one time, words like “controversy” and “gaffe” were reserved for only the most bold or shocking pronouncements; political comments that truly captivated our minds with interest or horror. Yet today, increasingly, we see Canadian political columnists lapsing into a sort of institutional laziness. Nowadays it seems inevitable that any politician who dares propose an idea that is even remotely challenging to the status quo will soon be portrayed as a borderline lunatic. When this is the standard, it’s hard not to be controversial. If a friend was to ask me how long I planned to continue writing for this newspaper I might reply that it depends who the editor is. Presumably that response wouldn’t shock any- one; it seems perfectly reasonable to leave a job if a particularly unpleasant boss is hired. Yet when Michael Ignatiaff suggested the exact same thing earlier last week, that his continued willingness to remain a Liberal MP was dependent on who won his party’s leadership, he was soundly condemned. According to the Globe’s Rex Murphy the comments “fell like a wrench into the guts of his campaign.” Headlines declared Iggy’s words to be “his latest misstep” while fellow leadership rival Scott Brison was soon describing the man as being “gaffe-prone.” Ignatiaff, for his part, soon had to release countless retractions and clarifications, saying no, no, no you misunderstood me, this is how I really feel... all this for daring to define the terms of his own career. Controversy is now considered as an end in itself. The media treats it as an inherently nega- tive occurrence, and expect politicians to avoid its taint at all costs. Many have clucked their tongues at Stephen Harper as of late for precisely this reason. The Prime Minister, after all, has committed the great sin of Canadian politics: he is not playing well in Quebec. . SCIENCE Matters David Suzuki, David Suzuki Foundation Have you ever been to a focus group? They’re very odd. Often used in marketing research, these small selections of randomly chosen people are brought together as a sampling of public opinion to gauge how folks feel about a particular product or issue. Recently, my foundation conducted a focus group about global warming to see where peo- ple are at in their understanding of this complex and challenging problem. The results? Let's just say they were disconcerting, to say the least. Simply put, most people don’t have a clue. The majority felt that global warming was a pretty important problem and they were concerned about it. But when pressed as to why it was a problem or what caused the problem, all hell broke loose. Apparently, according to the average Joe, global warming is happening because we’ve creat- ed a hole in the ozone layer, allowing the sun’s rays to enter the atmosphere and heat up the earth— or something like that. The cause of the problem is cars, or airplanes, or aerosol cans. No one really knows for sure. This is really quite remarkable. I would have thought that such confused understandings of the issue would have been commonplace five or six years ago, but with global warming being in newspapers on practically a daily basis this spring, on the front cover of magazines, in the- atres (An Inconvenient Truth), and a hot political issue as well, surely people would get it by now. Apparently I was wrong. People don’t get it. This is a big problem, because if people don’t get it, then they don’t really care, so politicians and CEOs don’t really care, and status quo rules the day. And blindly we march into the sunset. But while science magazines are all talking about carbon sequestration and climate-forcing mechanisms, the average person is still trying to decipher the nature of the problem itself. True, few citizens need to understand the complicated nuances of atmospheric science or the various mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, but people cannot care about things they do not 1 5 THE OTHER PRESS SEPTEMBER 14 2006 “Harper’s Honeymoon Coming to an End” proclaims one headline, “ Political Fallout for Harper in Quebec” says another. In deeply concerned tones, these articles scold Harper for hi controversial stance on the Lebanese wat; a stance which in turn has alienated voters of the ‘belle province.’ Meaningless, scary words like “Bush-style’ and ‘hard-right’ tend to be thrown around in such columns, collectively painting a picture of Harper as an irrational man who simply makes arbitrary and strange political decisions with little justification. Of course, we rarely get into the specifics of exactly why he has alienated Quebecers in thi first place. Perhaps because the real explanation, namely that Quebec culture tends to breed hysterically anti-American, anti-Israel, and often anti-Semitic sentiment, is so unpleasant to dis cuss. Easier to just portray the matter as the Prime Minister’s problem, an inevitable byproduc: of his controversial personality. In another era, one might be tempted to call Harper’s support for a close Canadian ally lik Israel a “policy stance.” Today’s journalists have decided that politicians no longer make policy however, just a string of bizarre, random pronouncements, to be sensationalized and scandal- ized, but above all, never viewed with any degree of context or common-sense. People will deny that the Canadian media has a liberal bias. But when we look at the under lying philosophical principles that seem to guide many Canadian editorial pages these days- controversy is inherently bad, the status quo is the only thing worth defending, and the right decision is whatever polls highest we see an ideology that could have been lifted straight from the Jean Chretien re-election handbook. We may have a Conservative government, but the Liberal mindset continues to march on. Public Doesn’t and Global arming understand. If our leaders are to take the issue seriously, the public must have at least a basic understanding of it. So, to clarify— the ozone layer’ is a part of the atmosphere way up high that helps shield the earth from the sun’s most harmful rays. A couple of decades ago, scientists realized that some of the chemicals we were using in our industries and homes were finding their way into the upper atmosphere, reacting with the ozone and destroying it. Scientists were concerned that if this continued, it would thin the vital protective layer, leading to increased skin cancers and crop damage. They sounded the alarm bell, the international community responded with the Montreal Protocol to phase out ozone-depleting substances, and today the ozone layer is gradually healing itself. Global warming is a quite different phenomenon. Again, it’s a human-made problem, but this time it’s due to the heat-trapping gases we are putting into the atmosphere from our indu: tries, cars and homes. These gases act like a blanket, keeping more heat near the earth’s surfac More heat also means more energy in the atmosphere, which means more frequent or severe extreme weather events like droughts, storms and floods. With each new piece of research, the expected effects of global warming become clearer, more urgent and more disturbing. Scientists say this will be one of the biggest challenges humanity will face this century. Right now we are not tackling the issue fast enough or direct enough to escape the most severe consequence. So if you understand what global warming is, and what it isn’t, please tell your friends. Please speak up and help ensure that we don’t continue to grope blindly into the future, searcl ing in the darkness for a light switch. Because at this rate, by the time we finally reach it, it ma no longer work.