Peter Foster: Anti-oil mayors are kings in Naomi Klein World

Following his meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday, Montreal mayor Denis Coderre seemed to back away somewhat from his radical opposition to the Energy East pipeline. But Mayor Coderre’s alarmism, and apparent disregard for the regulatory procedure for the nation’s Energy Board, is profoundly significant. It represents what might be dubbed “the rise from the mayors,” which, – like The Rise of the Machines in the Terminator movie franchise – ought to be an object of profound concern.

Obviously, mayors must reflect the worries of the constituents, and radical environmental non-governmental organizations, ENGOs, have done a fabulous job of spreading fear through misinformation. But Coderre’s stance represents greater than a casual alliance between Not in My Backyard, NIMBY, and never on Planet Earth, NOPE. It represents a part of a significantly larger UN-based Green Agenda to delegitimize national governments from above and below. For the reason that sense, last month’s Paris climate conference and the Montreal municipalities’ anti-pipeline stance is linked. Meanwhile it is almost not a coincidence that the mayors of Vancouver and Burnaby are resolutely opposed to the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which would also transport “dirty” Alberta oil.

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Trudeau talked about moving resources responsibly to market, and confirmed he involved introducing a brand new system of regulatory oversight. The problem is that finances a really credible system, and any reformed system will remain under siege from environmental groups which have not the slightest interest in the NEB’s mandate of judging the “public interest.” Meanwhile anyone who believes that bringing greenhouse gases into the review process – that Trudeau is committed – represents movement towards obtaining “social licence” for pipelines is dreaming in Technicolor.

The Trudeau reforms received suspiciously timely bureaucratic support when federal Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand joined the attack on the NEB in her annual report, claiming the board was failing to monitor compliance. Actually, the main guardian of the public interest rates are the self-interest of companies, to whom spills or any other accidents are horrendously costly, in environmental and reputational terms.

Meanwhile, an upswing from the mayors isn’t some chance occurrence. It is part of a method embodied within the perception of “subsidiarity,” the seemingly sensible notion that problems ought to be addressed at the smallest appropriate level. Environmental subsidiarity’s real meaning – and dangers – tend to be more easily understood should you translate the closely related nostrum “Think globally, act locally” as “Plot globally, agitate locally.”

The essence of Agenda 21, the late Maurice Strong’s wish list for a sustainable world, concocted in the 1992 UN conference in Rio, is control of society at each level. Its agents are environmental NGOs – of the sort which have brought the pipeline review tactic to a halt – and municipalities.

Clearly local authorities should oversee (although arguably in a roundabout way provide) services such as roads, transit and sewage (a rather sensitive issue in Montreal). But having a municipal climate plan makes about just as much sense as having a local nuclear non-proliferation plan (which, not coincidentally, was an execllent favourite of the left in the not-so-distant past).

The mayoral ascendency continues to be aided and abetted by UN-promoted organizations like the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI: Rhymes with “sickly”) that have popped up to spark and co-ordinate local initiatives, which thus have an extraordinary similarity. Another straw within the wind is that the former mayor of Toronto, David Miller, gone to live in head the WWF Canada, mother of ENGOs. Again, the “Smart City” movement is very much mixed up with the ideological trend towards more political control in the name of the cleaner environment.

It is, furthermore, no coincidence that radical anti-capitalist U.S. intellectual and TED-talker Benjamin Barber has suggested that mayors should “rule the world.” He understands what sort of rule that could be. The democratic nation state, he claims, is “utterly unsuited to interdependence.” Which is to say utterly unsuited to central control by Agenda 21-istas. What we should need, says Barber, is really a global parliament of mayors. Except, of course, when they think like Rob Ford. Or, come to think of it, even like Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi, a staunch liberal that has been confronted by the truth that bills have to become paid.

It ought to be noted that – like the majority of leftist ideology – the movement towards localism and direct democracy has limits, which are reached when local opinion looks to be going in an inconvenient direction.

Take for example the government of Ontario’s decision to steamroll local opposition to windfarms, or even the rancid Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, CBFA, where radical environmental organizations forced Canada’s largest forestry companies into a job-destroying agreement that ignored the communities that might be hardest hit.

Climate subsidiarity has additionally reared its more or less deliberately muddling head in the provincial level using the proliferation of growth-taxing ecofiscal programs aimed at “addressing” – yet having no conceivable impact upon – the worldwide climate.

The ultimate problem-cum-strategy of rule by mayor and lefty council  – which is essentially Naomi Klein-world – is that if everybody reaches have a say on everything, nothing ever gets done. Thus the Act Local crowd really only wants everybody to have a say on things they wish to stop. When it comes to things they wish to promote, they need to be rather less democratic and a a bit more forceful. Let’s hope electorates whatsoever levels eventually wake up for this threat, and terminate it.