Saturday, December 15, 2007

Dear Aaron: Just so you know ...


Although I'd like to be gentle with Blogging Tory Aaron Lee Wudrick given his genuine attempt to engage his (stupid, useless, corporate cocksuckerish) BT colleagues on the issue of the vile DMCA legislation, I'm going to give him one more whap related to this, where he tries to defend Canada's poster boy for anger management classes John Baird for stiffing a bunch of Canadian youth at the Bali climate change conference:

Our federal environment minister cancels his appearance in front of 30 Canadian youth, so he could go and try to pressure some country named “China” into making climate-change commitments? Good God Minister, don’t you have your priorities straight? Since when did actual negotiations take precedence over walking into easily foreseeable media tripwires that work to the political advantage of the government’s opponents? ...

Any fool knows that the best way for Canada to take the lead at Bali would be for John Baird to stand up in front of 30 youth and let them berate and excoriate him for not adopting their preferred “let’s sign anything!” strategy at the conference.

Yes, Aaron, His Royal Lividness John Baird is all about the prioritizing, and maximizing his effectiveness and stuff like that there. Until you read this (emphasis added):

But conservation groups at the summit suggested that Canadian Environment Minister John Baird was deliberately wrecking the discussions after he went AWOL from a key meeting organized one night earlier to resolve a negotiating deadlock.

Baird was personally invited to attend the meeting by the summit's president on Thursday, which was supposed to be the second-last day of the conference. But he failed to show up for the marathon negotiating session which finished after three o'clock in the morning.

"What does it say about how serious Mr. Baird is taking these negotiations?" asked Equiterre spokesperson Steven Guilbeault. "Imagine, you're a junior bureaucrat (from Canada), and you have in front of you the equivalent of a U.S. minister or a Chinese minister or a Japanese minister. I mean there's a huge gap in terms of the authority, in terms of how autonomous the decisions you make can be without having to go back and consult the delegation." ...

CanWest News Service has confirmed that Baird also left the final phase of crucial negotiations and retreated to his hotel room at least once on Friday, while Canadian negotiators were, according to sources at the conference, creating obstacles to stop the rest of the world from recognizing the importance of binding targets

Did you catch all that, Aaron? Mr. Priority was explicitly invited to be a part of some very high-level discussions ... and he fucked off. So howzabout we not do this "He had more important things to do" evasion again?

Yes, I realize you couldn't have known this at the time but, as they say, given enough time, the truth will out, and now we know.

Right, Aaron?

8 comments:

ALW said...

Well, at least that's a more credible argument than your previous one, which amounted to "stop being an asshole, Aaron"

CC said...

You're right, Aaron, that wasn't called for and I apologize. But it's still tiring to see Canada's cons perpetually giving people like Baird the benefit of the doubt, when the same behaviour from, say, Stephane Dion, would have those same folks howling from the rafters about his lack of courtesy.

ALW said...

Point taken.

I was actually surprised at your previous attack on me for that post. While I don't usually agree with you, I always at least see what you're getting at. That was the first time it sounded like you were just plain angry.

I agree that it was bad form for Baird to bail out on his committed speaking engagement, I was simply trying to put it in perspective. Yes, it's bad to bail. But given the nature of the event he was attending, it was certainly reasonable that he might have to rejig his schedule.

Anyways, I look forward to seeing the commentary from yourself and others on the deal that was actually struck at Bali, and whether or not Canada's positiong played a critical, critical role in what was/was not ultimately agreed upon.

The Seer said...

Are all these snubs deliberate? Or does John Baird have a drinking problem?

Ti-Guy said...

Are all these snubs deliberate?

I think they are, but with Baird, it's hard to say. He really is out of his league when it comes to this dossier and since he can't handle confrontation gracefully (or indifferently), he might actually be doing everyone a favour by buggering off.

But I doubt it. The Harpies have a a history of undermining deliberative processes when they can't come up with more persuasive arguments.

...I'd so love to be working with people like that right now.

Sheena said...

Frank Magazine has had a few juicy bits about Baird's legendary stairway hurls.

Beamers Creek Coffee Roasters said...

OK, can someone honestly tell me this. Even if one accepts all the worst case scenarios re anthropogenic global warming (and for me that is a pretty big if, since when you look at the thing, the IPCC seems very, very politicaly driven, and there are a lot of scientists skeptical of the IPCC's conclusions - including some of the scientists who did the work cited by the IPCC). So, even it this is all true, Canada's share of man-made greenhouse gas emissions is so small (IIRC 3%), that if our country ceased to exist, the effect on global warming would be minimal. Given all this, why is it unreasonable to argue that unless countries like China and India are on board, we are simply indulging in a feel good exercise that will have no real effect on climate change? I'm not being sarcastic, I honestly would like to know what you folks think, because I'm having a really hard time understanding all the animosity directed towards Baird here.

Paladiea said...

Mien Gott! Who is this guy?

The reason Canada should lower our carbon emissions is because a) having a green economy is profitable b)we'd be setting an example to the world about how and why it must be done. Every little bit helps as they say.

And the IPCC is NOT politicized. Only deniers say that. Could you care to name any of these "many" scientists who disagree, who are not funded by big oil and who are actually climatologists?

And furthermore could you point to peer reviewed articles that point out that climate change is NOT happening and anthropogenic?