There are hardly words for the scandal this represents. For the dreadful irresponsibility of the Harper government. George Monbiot said that the triumvirate of Harper and Bush and Howard blocking action on climate represented a moral failure more culpable than that of Neville Chamberlain.
And of course cranky Steve Janke is all upset and demanding that opposition leader Stephan Dion denounce Ms. May:
...if he doesn't, then he's guilty of failing the same key leadership test not once, but twice.
But before Steve gets his shorts in a knot (if they aren't permanently in that condition already) lets all remember how this played out the first time back in May. Several writers, including Aaron Wherry, Philippe Gohier, and myself took a spin through the old Hansards and found any number of Neville Chamberlain vs. The Nazis references, made by members of all the major parties. I wrote:
...I can state with near certainty that there has been at least one Neville Chamberlain analogy made in every parliamentary session back to at least 1998.
In fact, my favorite one occurred on December 14th, 1995, when Reform Party Leader and spiritual godfather to today's CPoC Preston Manning announced:
Mr. Speaker, the minister provides no rational answer because there is no rational answer.
Any government that can talk itself into believing that a separatist veto over the Constitution of Canada helps national unity can talk itself into any other kind of concession. It is the Neville Chamberlain approach to constitutional negotiation: unity in our time through irrational concessions...
I am all for laying off the Nazi analogies, not because I think they are inappropriate but because I think they're getting a little bit stale. There must be some equally hideous if perhaps slightly less famous totalitarian state/slash movement that Harper could be said to be (analogously) aiding and abetting with his climate change policy.
(Although, come to think of it, I myself am actively campaigning to have the term "climate change denier" replaced with "warmocaust collusionist", because I think that one really lays the holocaust link on thick. So I guess I am not entirely innocent either.).
