Photo: Alberta tar sands, Melina Mara, Washington Post
A
recent survey suggests Canadians now think the environment is the most
pressing issue facing us – ahead, for the first time, of health,
education, the economy and unemployment. This finding follows a series
of embarrassing news stories about the Canadian Conservatives’
Bush-style disregard for the subject, and minority PM Harper's personal
and long-standing loathing of environmentalism as a "socialist scheme", plus news coverage of the election of environmentalist Stéphane Dion as leader of the Liberal Party and shoo-in for next PM.
Canadians have always been environmentalists. But until Harper there were no anti-environment political leaders. Even Albertans, the most conservative Canadians, are distraught about their tar sands eco-holocaust, an immense and catastrophically destructive project with absolutely no regulatory oversight. And the media are starting to report this (way too late, of course). Today, a Canadian conservation group made headlines
by issuing a report suggesting zero development in Canada’s Northwest
Territories would produce ten times the economic value of the proposed
(and approved) mega-pipeline, drilling and highway project for the
pristine and fragile Mackenzie River valley.
What’s going on
here? In normal times, the environment is not even on the mainstream
media radar. The Green Party, with 5-10% of popular vote in recent
elections, has always been consciously shut out of the pre-election
leaders’ debates sponsored by the mainstream media oligopoly. "They’re
a one-issue fringe party", one media executive said. But now, suddenly,
we're deluged with environmental stories. "It’s going to be the
deciding issue in the next election and probably others to come", one
radio media pundit said the other day.
Meanwhile, Canadians
haven't really changed their views on the subject at all. We always and
overwhelmingly supported Kyoto, no matter what Harper would have you
believe. We believe mega-polluters should be jailed, no matter who they
are or how many jobs they have allegedly created. And environmentalists
like David Suzuki consistently prevail in lists of Canada's most
admired people.
What has happened is that the mainstream media, instead of doing their job
-- making what's important interesting -- have been simply lazy,
attending press conferences at which they're spoon-fed sound bites. And
when they started to notice that a lot of these sound bites prepared by
politicians were suddenly about Green issues, they switched from
completely ignoring the environment to over-reporting it. Extensively
but superficially. And then Canadians, inundated with environmental
stories and offended by Harper's anti-Green extremism, and then pursued
by pollsters, did the expected and elevated the issue to number one on
the oversimplified media hit parade.
But the disaster of the
Alberta tar sands continues unabated, with more mainstream reporting on
it but no investigative journalism (too expensive and too much work).
The Mackenzie River megaproject is proceeding full speed. The so-called
‘liberal’ government of (ex-Conservative) Jean Charest in Québec has
just announced another god-awful massive flooding
of Northern Québec wilderness for yet another devastating hydro dam and
diversion project. Our politicians, for all their rhetoric, are aiding and betting
these and other mega-polluters, and the media (most of whom rely on
advertising from these same corporatists) will not call them to account.
The
CBC is the best of a sorry lot, but they’re financially starved and
bureaucratic (the latter a result of being too big and too centralized,
not a consequence of being publicly funded). There is no money to be
made by private broadcasters in the mainstream media oligopoly from
investigative journalism, and lots to be made by turning a blind eye
to corporatist misdeeds, and just blandly regurgitating self-promoting
government and corporate press releases.
It's the same the world
over. The mainstream legacy media are too lazy, complacent and
profit-focused to learn what's really going on and then tell us. They
are doing the public a great disservice. And judging from the
assessment of the media by citizens in recent polls, the public knows
it. But the public will only care enough to do something about it when
it affects them personally, and by then it will be too late.
As
I've said before, the political arena is no place for environmentalists
who actually want to accomplish something. We need instead to do the
journalists' job and investigate, research, learn and spread the word
through our own personal networks and personal journalism. Neither the
corporatist mega-polluters nor the politicians can hide from the truth.
Once the citizens realize the degree to which corporate-political
complicity is despoiling our land, ruining our air, poisoning us,
exhausting and fouling our water, stealing and depleting our resources,
and depriving us of any sustainable legacy to leave our children and
grand-children, we will starve them out and bring them down.
Just don’t expect the mainstream media to lend a hand.
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