Over at CNS News, Adam Brickley has a piece up about the book 'Global Warming for Dummies'. Brickley's entire column is interesting, but this part -- at the end -- especially caught my attention:
One of the writers is also a politician in Canada. Co-author Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada – a Canadian environmental political party.
Although the Green Party has never won a seat in the Canadian Parliament, its candidates won 6.78 percent of the vote in Canada’s 2008 national election and May was included in televised debates involving major party leaders.
May will be “standing” – i.e. running – for election to Parliament in the next election. Recent polls have shown the Green Party winning as much as 11 percent of the vote in the next election, which could occur as early as this autumn.
May’s “For Dummies” guide suggests that readers use the content of the book to make political decisions.
“Knowing what solutions government can enact empowers you as a voter,” the authors say on page 143. “You can knowledgably select candidates whose climate change plan seems like it’ll be most effective.”
The entire 10th chapter--“Voting for Your Future: What Governments Can Do”--is devoted to politics.
One posting on the Green Party Web in February offered “an autographed copy of Global Warming For Dummies (a $23.99 value) when you donate $150 or more to the Green Party of Canada.”
“The book was fairly separate from the political party, though we definitely were happy to have it--to use it for publicity and publicity for her,” said Green Party of Canada communications officer Michael Bernard in an interview with CNSNews.com.
In another passage, the book advocates halting development on the Athabasca tar sands. These sands constitute the world’s second-largest oil patch and their development is a major industry in the Canadian province of Alberta.
“Canada’s decision to keep expanding and developing the tar sands is an example for other nations of what not to do,” says page 66, “while making oil development a top priority, it’s impossible for Canada to decrease its greenhouse gas emissions.”
“The mining industry,” it says, “consumes a huge amount of energy in order to produce oil, which primarily the United States buys for cars that don’t have proper energy efficiency standards.”
... Asking the leader of Canada's Green Party to co-author an ostensibly unbiased book on the environment is tantamount to asking Hillary Clinton to write "Healthcare For Dummies".