Eco extremists are threatening the economy and even Confederation with their opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline project

“Rightly to be great, Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw.” Hamlet (having a Coke).

For now your straws and swizzle sticks are safe. Prime Minister Trudeau is not (yet) going along with Britain’s Theresa May in her fierce campaign to ban the drinking straw. It is a tribute to the wily manoeuvres and insidious influence of the international straw lobby that our PM “refused to be pinned down” and remained “noncommittal” on the menace of the common drinking straw to the planet’s ecosystems. On so grand a question he felt it better to defer till at least a full convocation of the world’s great economies, the G7. Wise man.

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It was a severe disappointment to those hoping for Trudeau leadership on the straw cartel. After all, straws are, as one environmentalist noted, just small pipelines for CO2-saturated, atmosphere-degrading soft drinks. “Anyone can stand up to the oil lobby, but the gnomes of the international straw trade … ?” Well, that’s a different set of emissions.

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The sheer volume of venues prohibited any serious dip into the international wardrobe closet

This tidy drama was of course playing out in London, to which Mr. Trudeau had flown from Paris after flying from Ottawa to Lima and from Lima to Ottawa and from Ottawa to Paris. The sheer volume of venues prohibited any serious dip into the international wardrobe closet, the prime minister austerely confining himself to the grim stylings of the business suit.

Meantime, during this rigorous hejira, back home, the pot was boiling over as usual. Kinder Morgan issued a statement that the newly hatched idea of the federal government or Alberta providing a financial backstop was not the kind of “certainty” or “clarity” it needed on the one remaining pipeline that would release Alberta oil to the higher revenues of world markets.

For that plan clearly sidesteps the real obstruction to construction: the implacable opposition to any future development of the Alberta oilsands as represented by the Green Party in B.C. Andrew Weaver’s three-person party, two more than Elizabeth May’s to be sure, holds Premier John Horgan’s NDP in its ideological clasp. As the holy crucifix in high-noon sunlight is to the silent screen Dracula of old, so is the thought that oil from Alberta would move in a pipeline through B.C., to Mr. Weaver and his caucus duo.

Photo by Tolga AkmenAFP/Getty Images

Government-to-government disagreement is not however, by any means, the real problem here. As was most saliently noted this week by Brian Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, those who believe that the interprovincial quarrel is the main obstacle to seeing the Trans Mountain built are fooling themselves. It is not, nor has it ever been. “Even (if) B.C. accepts it must obey the law, we are left with those who feel no such scruples: the hardline environmental movement.”

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There is the real threat. Regardless of any future court resolutions, any accommodations worked out between the Alberta and B.C. governments, there remain the ninjas of extreme environmentalism: the various and legion NGOs, the acrobats of Greenpeace, the dubious think-tanks and “charities,” the foundations, foreign and domestic, the radical Indigenous groupings — all consortia who have been fully baptized and subscribe to every dogma of the science-settled Church of the Latter Day Apocalyptics of Global Warming. Professional scofflaws all, who claim the virtue of their cause is supreme over law, government, the national economy, or any other perspective other than their self-declared mission.

Example. Federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is a legislator. She makes laws you have to follow. But when a court — the instrument of law — issues an injunction, she flouts it; because her private convictions about “saving the Earth” are superior to the law. That is the shared mentality of all radical environmentalists. It is a view also manipulated by those who are not radical environmentalists, but whose love of trees and pandas is but an umbrella for less salubrious agendas. The view that radical environmentalism is just about the environment is abandoned by most in early grade school around the time of the third spelling book.

The view that radical environmentalism is just about the environment is abandoned by most in early grade school

Further, the tactics of extremist opposition on environmental issues have been legitimized by never seriously, or only rarely, being challenged by political leaders. The current federal government has so glowingly wedded itself to “leading the charge against climate change” that it has, wittingly or otherwise, created the ideal climate (pun fully intended) for such groupings which deploy such tactics to flourish, and even earn celebration.

Justin Trudeau’s government will never insist on building a pipeline if the opposition to it mobilizes in blockades, harassment and civil disobedience — as it has clearly indicated it will — to stop it. Will he defy big-name environmental groups? The subset of Aboriginal groups who oppose Trans Mountain, as opposed to the larger number who support it? (See Chief Ernie Crey’s tweet below.)

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Mr. Trudeau has not the will. More importantly, he has not the ideological disposition to do so.

Further, having effectively killed the Energy East pipeline (changing the regulatory rules killed that project), the federal government has made Trans Mountain the Alamo (obligatory Texas reference) of the environmental movement in Canada. The cancellation of other pipelines has narrowed the battleground, upped the stakes, and facilitated the contest — all to the advantage of its opponents.

This is why Kinder Morgan is not impressed by either a federal backstop or some surface reconciliation between B.C. and Alberta. And why these 11th-hour interventions are somewhere between playacting and desperation.

Alarmingly however, the battle has moved beyond all its pretexts. It’s now agitating strains within the Confederation, impairing elements of our common national understanding. Environmentalism has containment problems of its own. Canada is beginning to see that.

It must then have been a bit of a relief to decline the battle over straws and soda pop.