Government for dinosaurs.

As Northern Ontario's conservative, Tony Clement hasn't been very effective in influencing federal policy. Harper and his Environment Minister, Rona Ambrose went ahead and announced a policy that does more for dinosaurs than for the people of Northern Ontario.

The government postponed action on climate destabilization and tried to cover their tracks with a wishy-washy anti-pollution program. Critics are saying they tried an environmental bait-and-switch routine. Their plan will keep Alberta and the oil companies happy, and it may buy some support in major cities, but for Northern Ontario it's a tragedy. Expanding oil revenues will keep the Canadian dollar above its natural price and drive Northern forest companies into bankruptcy. Instead of being a hero in the fight against climate change Northern Ontario gets to be the victim.

The Boreal forest is the world's biggest carbon sink and it offers the best way to take carbon out of the atmosphere. A ton of wood contains half a ton of carbon. A real "made-in-Canada environment policy would maximize the carbon we store by maximizing the wood we produce. Wood in standing trees, wood in houses, wood in bridges, wood in chairs--every piece helps as long as it last a long time. Storing carbon in wood slows the buildup of carbon-dioxide that is threatening to destroy the world as we know it.

It is no exaggeration to say that Harper's climate policy could destroy the world as we know it. Although global warming doesn't sound bad when you have grown up with Canadian winters, global warming is just the optimistic scenario. We will get warming, along with thawing permafrost, more tornados, more droughts, and vanishing polar bears. Island countries will disappear; we will have to make room for millions of refugees. The Americans will get our water, and when the Northwest Passage is open year round they will run tankers through Canadian territory whether we like it or not. This kind of gradual change is the optimistic scenario.

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But what if the climate system goes nuts? We know, for example, that the North Atlantic conveyor that keeps Europe warm is slowing. No one knows what will happen if it stops. It turns out there are dozens of really nasty scenarios with scientific support that we can't rule out.

My favourite destabilization scenario is based on a story about dinosaurs. It goes like this. 67 million years ago, before the dinosaurs ruled the earth, the atmosphere contained nearly 35 percent oxygen, enough to make you giddy. Today it contains 21 percent. For some reason just before the age of dinosaurs carbon dioxide levels started to rise. Forests burned, peat bogs virtually evaporated, and the seas got warmer. Huge amounts of methane hydrate escaped from where it lay frozen on the ocean bottom. Since methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the greenhouse effect went into high gear. Methane combines with oxygen to make carbon dioxide, so it didn't last too long. Unfortunately it combined with a lot of oxygen. Paleontologist Peter Ward claims that the oxygen level dropped to about 16 percent--the equivalent of trying to breathe at the top of a 14,000-foot mountain. Low oxygen levels, High C02 and high sweltering heat caused the greatest die-off of all time.

Dinosaurs, it turns out, were very good at breathing. They flourished at low oxygen levels. By about 40 million years ago, however, the oxygen level had risen to 23 percent, setting the stage for large placental animals like us take over the world. All we needed was for something to kill off those pesky dinosaurs.

The lesson is that the climate system may have some nasty surprises for us. An insurance agent would sell you an insurance policy. After all, you buy insurance just in case your house burns down. House fires are about as likely as climate catastrophes. Unfortunately insurance only works when most of us don't have a fire. If my dinosaur story repeats itself there won't be anyone to collect from.

That's why Harper's environment policy scares a lot of very knowledgeable people. Harper may think he is making the world safe for democracy, but he may really be making it safe for the return of the dinosaurs. They aren't gone, you know--their descendants, the birds, inherited the advanced breathing system. That's why they can fly at altitudes that would kill us. Like good conservatives the birds hung onto those dinosaur genes and now they may need them.

Dave Robinson is a professor of economics at Laurentian University. He can be reached at [e-mail]