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The brute power politics behind the Canadian government’s inaction on climate change are pretty straightforward: the Conservatives are rooted politically in the most regressive elements of an oilpatch that puts a higher priority on short-term profits and jobs than on our children’s long-term well-being.

But the fact that they get away with it politically is more puzzling.

Unlike in the United States, for some time now a substantial majority of Canadians has been convinced that climate change is caused mostly by human activity. One Environics poll last year suggested that those who believe what is, after all, the scientific consensus outnumber those who don’t by a margin of more than four to one.

The same poll showed most Canadians believe it is the government’s responsibility to take action and say they are willing to see a carbon tax in the province where they live — even in British Columbia, where they have already have one.

So how do Stephen Harper and his government get away with it?

The answer is two parts psychology and two parts politics:

Denial: Freud pointed out that human beings can be heroic in pushing to the back of their minds almost any unpleasant reality – whether it be a cheating spouse, a drunken parent or the inevitability of our own deaths. This, he said, can also be achieved by putting the responsibility for doing something about the problem on others. In the case of climate change, it’s the government’s and the international community’s job to fix climate change, so why should we worry? It’s just a lot less fun watching the kids play soccer if you are always thinking how climate change may wreck their lives.

The stunning thing is that the Harper government maintains the artifice of sharing the public’s concerns about climate change while at the same time using passive-aggressive tactics to check even modest steps to combat it at the international level — and even in Alison Redford’s Alberta.

Assessing risks: Human beings just aren’t that good at assessing probabilities and risks, or making the trade-offs between them, especially over time, as behavioural economists such as Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler have been exploring in recent years. That’s why surveys show we exaggerate the danger of being killed by a terrorist, why we buy lottery tickets when the odds are so bad, and why we don’t save enough for retirement. The risks of climate change have been difficult to imagine — at least until recently, when changes to the weather have become more dramatic. We find it much easier to conjure up the fear of losing our jobs or of paying more for gas at the pump.

The Harper government’s communication strategy: The government’s approach to climate change has essentially been to make a lot of “policy noise”, proclaiming various targets without doing anything to achieve them, promising to harmonize with a non-existent American plan, and so on. As a recent draft paper by two University of Ottawa scholars has suggested, this meaningless marching back and forth creates an illusion of government action that plays to the psychological weaknesses I described above. They call it “constructed ignorance”. The stunning thing is that the Harper government maintains the artifice of sharing the public’s concerns about climate change while at the same time using passive-aggressive tactics to check even modest steps to combat it at the international level — and even in Alison Redford’s Alberta.

Opposition squabbling: The Liberals ran an election campaign in 2008 on climate change in the shape of Stéphane Dion’s “Green Shift” plan, which included a carbon tax. Unfortunately, the lesson the Liberals seem to have learned from their election loss is that aggressive policy on climate change scares voters. The NDP have tried to exploit this Liberal vulnerability, drawing a contrast with their own cap-and-trade plan, which they say is not a carbon tax. This may be literally true but it is misleading. Instead of emphasizing their common desire to fight climate change, the Liberals and NDP squabble over centre-left voters by attacking each other’s plans. Result: a tactical victory for the Conservatives.

Our political system has failed to produce the action Canadians want on climate change despite 20 years of talk. In the United States, environmentalists have given up on politicians doing the right thing, whether Republican or Democrat, and have turned to public activism. Led by Bill McKibben and his organization 350.org they have taken the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline directly to the public.

If, as is now widely predicted, President Obama OKs the project, expect a long, bitter campaign of public protest, legal obstruction and civil disobedience.

The challenge on climate change here in Canada is not persuasion. Canadians, for the most part, get it — even increasingly in Alberta. The challenge is mobilization.

If the political system is failing us on the biggest issue we face as a generation, we need to find ways around it.

You can follow Paul Adams on Twitter @padams29

Paul Adams is a veteran of the CBC, the Globe and Mail and EKOS Research. He has taught political science at the University of Manitoba and journalism at Carleton, where he is an associate professor. His new book Power Trap, on the dilemma of Canada’s opposition parties, was published in September.

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