Time to Mete Out Mistletoe, Coal

(18 December 2007) - Mistletoe and coal. Reward and punishment. It’s part of the season. As another year ends, columnists everywhere sit in judgement and decide who has been good and who has been bad. Who is rewarded and gets to sit below the mistletoe. Who is punished and has to walk around for a day with a lump of coal in a stocking toe.

This year, there are lots of candidates for the mistletoe. One sprig goes to Steven Truscott for the determined way he fought to clear his name and the dignified way he reacted to his success. There’s not many like him, and we’re lucky to have him among us. Another goes to our mayor, Karen Farbridge. She has taken a city council composed mostly of novices and helped it reach a lot of good decisions. Not easily done when seven of the 12 are new to the game. Harder still when half the tossed out ones are trying to torpedo everything this council tries to accomplish. They can have a lump of coal each.

On a global level, a sprig has to go to whoever selects the Nobel Peace Prize. They were astute enough this year to split it between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore. I have never been a big Al Gore fan, but he is one of the highest profile people raising the alarm about global warming. I was rooting for Sheila Watt-Cloutier, but that’s neither here nor there now.

The Nobel decision that global warming is a threat to world peace was very profound. It should have caused politicians and people around the world to wake up and smell the fumes. Some people did. Down in Australia, they woke up in time to overturn their government. The new one moved quickly to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Some politicians didn’t wake up, Stephen Harper and John Baird chief among them. Thanks to them, Canada came first in the fossil of the day awards at the United Nations climate change meeting that concluded in Bali last week. They behaved just as badly at the Commonwealth summit meeting in Uganda last month. For their efforts, Harper and Baird get a lump of coal large enough to match the odious footprint they leave wherever they go.

It’s not just that Baird embarrassed our country. He’s endangering others. At both meetings, leaders of low lying islands pleaded for action to stop the polar ice cap from melting and flooding their countries. Baird did not care. He was more interested in cuddling up to the Bush administration and mirroring their backward policies.

Before we run out of coal, we must pass a few lumps along to the bright lights in the provincial Ministry of Transportation who want to turn the Hanlon into a full bore 400-series highway. It’s a dumb idea that will devastate a large part of our city. A full sprig of mistletoe goes to Maggie Laidlaw for her determination to halt the Hanlon hoax, as she calls it. Get on her bus and help her succeed. If you want to improve the Hanlon, think traffic circles. If you want improved traffic between Guelph and Waterloo Region, think Light Rapid Rail.

Mistletoe is a renewable resource, so there’s a lot more of it around than coal. This is good, because a lot more people deserve a sprig of it. We can start with all the people who continue to wash and sort their garbage properly even while the composting facility is under repair. It’s taking a while to get the old Council out of our teeth, but the city is getting back on track. We want to be ready to resume our leading spot in waste management as soon as we can. There are other folk around town doing their bit to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. I’m thinking now of the growing number of locally owned restaurants with 100-mile menus. If you want to preserve your landscape you have to eat from it. The Woolwich Arms is a good example. Their draught beer and their food are produced within shouting distance of Guelph. There must be others doing the same thing. They should hang up their mistletoe and exercise their bragging rights.

To one degree or another, we are doing our bit to reduce global warming. For that, I get the final lump of coal: my puns are bad, but my poetry is verse.