Since it didn’t have much time to work out a platform, the new Conservative party apparently had to borrow a lot of its ideas.

What’s striking is how many seem to come from the Bush Republicans — increased military spending (to better fight the “war on terror”), an attack on gun control, a three-strikes-you’re-out crime policy, private medicine, ever-lower taxes and even a “lifetime savings plan” lifted straight out of George W. Bush’s 2004 budget.

So it’s not surprising that Stephen Harper indicated last week he’ll also follow Bush down the reckless path of rejecting the Kyoto accord on global warming.

In doing so, Harper shows how completely the new party created last fall by the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance amounts to a takeover by the more right-wing Alliance, which Harper led.

Harper’s rejection of Kyoto represents a dramatic departure from positions taken by the former Progressive Conservative party which, under Brian Mulroney, actually played a leading role in the 1980s in drawing world attention to the problem of global warming.

In June 1988, Mulroney was the opening speaker at a pivotal international scientific conference on global warming in Toronto. The conference ended with a consensus statement that “humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences are second only to global nuclear war.”

In 1992, Mulroney, along with 153 other world leaders, signed a legally binding convention committing their countries to an international process to address climate change.

By rejecting this rational approach, Harper has aligned his party with a small faction that for years has attempted to block the world from dealing meaningfully with climate change.

This small, but immensely powerful faction is led by Exxon, the world’s richest corporation and biggest peddler of oil, one of the leading sources of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Since 1992, Exxon has fought aggressively to derail the Kyoto process.

As the scientific case about global warming grew stronger in the 1990s, Exxon was increasingly isolated. Even major oil companies like BP and Shell dropped out of the anti-Kyoto campaign.

The campaign got new life with the election of George W. Bush, who received more money from the oil and gas industry in the 1999-2000 period than any other federal candidate received over the previous decade. Bush quickly announced the U.S. withdrawal from Kyoto.

Even without the U.S., the treaty will come into effect if Russia ratifies it this fall, as promised. Elizabeth May, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, argues that a pullout by Canada, which has already ratified the treaty, would send a bad signal to Russia at a crucial moment.

May is particularly alarmed by Harper’s questioning of the basic science of global warming — a tactic long employed by Exxon and adopted by the Bush administration.

In fact, few scientific subjects have been more thoroughly scrutinized in recent years, nor produced such broad consensus.

Given the seriousness of the potential threat — floods, droughts, including in the Canadian Prairies, extreme heat and cold, the submerging of parts of Europe and North America — the world has taken urgent steps to tackle the problem.

In 1988, following the Toronto conference, the U.N. and the World Meteorological Organization set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to examine the science of global warming, using a rigorous peer review system.

Each IPCC report is drawn up after extensive research. A draft is then sent to a few experts, then redrafted and sent to every relevant scientist in the world — about 2,500. After feedback from them, it is redrafted and sent back to them again. “Without any question, it is the most intense peer review system ever,” says former IPCC chair Robert Watson.

The IPCC has concluded that, after 10,000 years without significant temperature change, the build-up of greenhouse gases in the last century is affecting the Earth’s temperature. The U.S. National Academy of Scientists backs the IPCC’s position. As Harvard University’s James McCarthy notes: “There is no debate among any statured scientist of what is happening.”

But a tiny group of scientists — some financed by the oil industry — continue to suggest there is uncertainty.

The Kyoto issue dramatically highlights the split between traditional conservatives, who take the preservation of the environment seriously, and the new brand of conservatives who regard the environment as just another romping ground to be exploited in an unregulated marketplace.

Sadly, it is this new brand — who could be dubbed Exxon conservatives — who seem poised to take over our government later this month.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...