Kyoto's conscientious objector
By: Lorne Gunter

Kyoto's conscientious objector
More Kyoto scandal from Montreal - propaganda extraordinaire!

By: Lorne Gunter,
National Post (Toronto) November 28, 2005

Beginning this week and carrying on well into next, Montreal's canape caterers, its Beaujolais purveyors, Voss water suppliers, fresh Ahi tuna mongers and Wagyu beef importers will be busy as can be. Every chef with a tall hat, every waiter with a tux, every chambermaid, doorman and maitre d' will be rushed off his or her feet.

The UN is in town.

The 11th "conference of the parties" (COP11), made up of those countries that signed the 1997 Kyoto accord on global warming -- some 3,000 official delegates and 6,000 observers --doesn't talk catastrophe on an empty stomach. Why would it? The vast majority of participants will be there on the tab of their taxpayers back home -- official government delegates, government-funded scientists, and NGO members whose travel is being covered by a government grant.

There will be celebrities, too, drawn by the desire to have their famous faces associated with a fashionable cause. And environmentalists and media and demonstrators.

But what there won't be is any objective debate about the science of global warming.

For the UN and the host Canadian government, the issue is settled: Man-made global warming (GW) is real and its solution will require lots of centralized planning and regulation. Ending global warming will feed big national governments and busybody international organizations just as surely as all those caterers, purveyors and suppliers will feed COP delegates. Therefore, delegates won't hear from anyone who questions the theory.

Ottawa has hired Montreal's Stonehaven Productions to ensure delegates hear only from those celebrities who agree with the GW orthodoxy, too. Stonehaven is the producer of the highly biased television series The Great Warming and the equally subjective upcoming Secrets of the Last Glaciers, which is billed as a documentary about the race by scientists against "the very greenhouse conditions we've created" to extract critical scientific data from high-elevation glaciers "before they melt away."

Stonehaven has recruited pop stars and actors to deliver highly polished propaganda pieces throughout the COP. It's even written their blurbs for them.

The clips are full of blame and doom. "An uncertain shadow is building on our children's planet ... and only we can stop it."

"We have only one home -- a little planet so finely tuned that life thrives. But something's changing that balance -- and warming our world." It's humans and human activities. "Will we do anything about it?"

But producer Karen Coshof, who is also the producer of The Great Warming and Secrets, made the mistake of asking Olympic gold-medal skier and entrepreneur Nancy Greene Raine to be one of the talking heads. Raine said sure, but, in an e-mail to Coshof, said she wanted to write her own message and added "I would need your assurance that it would be used." On Nov. 15, Coshof replied "Of course you can write your own, and you have my personal assurance it will be used."

Raine's draft stated: "Scientific discoveries in the years since the Kyoto Protocol was signed have rendered it out of date. It is time to re-evaluate Canada's position ... The Kyoto Protocol is not in our best interest, and will not prevent climate change. The billions being wasted trying to stop this natural phenomenon should be diverted to solving real environmental problems that we can control."

That's when the back-pedaling began.

"We cannot send political messages in these clips," Coshof wrote to Raine, "Our focus is on urging action."

Of course urging action is by its very nature a political act, particularly urging such obviously one-sided action as the COP-11 celebrities.

Coshof then seemed to hope she could put Raine off by telling her she had just 48 hours to have the clip taped and sent to producers. Greene said that was no problem, but asked again, "Can you confirm that my comments as I wrote them would be used?"

Only a week after giving Greene her "personal assurance it will be used," Coshof claimed she was "just assembling" the celebrity messages and that Stonehaven were "not the arbiters of the final product." "My advice to you," Coshof closed, was "probably best forget this."

And my advice to you, if you are expecting objective, scientific analysis when you are watching coverage of the COP11: Probably best forget it.
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Lorne Gunter is on the editorial board of the National Post and is a columnist with the Edmonton Journal - he may be contacted at lgunter@telus.net.