Head of the Council of Canadians and world renown water expert Maude Barlow condemned Harpo's decision to withdraw from the UNCCD saying, “Anything that they’re involved in that can lead to more evidence that we’re a planet in crisis environmentally they don’t want to be part of. They simply do not want this information coming forward."
David Suzuki says in his blog, "Canada is becoming increasingly isolated on the world stage, especially when it comes to environmental issues For our government to stop working with the rest of the world to resolve some of the most serious issues we face is a betrayal of Canadian values."
Barlow and Suzuki correctly focus on the upcoming scientific UNCCD meeting that will undoubtedly define AGW as the principle cause of the planet's accelerating desertification as the reason for Harpo's new policy. Others point to statements by Harpo and his henchman John Baird about only 18% of the UNCCD's budget going directly to remedial work as simply a smokescreen to evade the fact that most of the budget goes into the accredited scientific research they so desperately want to discredit. The UN's researchers will conclude that dirty fossil fuels like coal, tar sands crud, and fugitive methane released by fracking - industries that pay the Conservatives bills - are the primary causes of desertification, an anathema to Harpo and his ilk.
Like their Tea Party Republican counterparts in the U.S., Harpo's conservatives are opposed to science as a matter of faith. They truly believe that their imaginary being - "God" - is sovereign over creation and therefore humans can do no real damage. Harpo belongs to the Christian and Missionary Alliance, an evangelical Protestant church with two million members. Alberta's petro state is one of its great strongholds on the continent. The church believes that the free market is divinely inspired and that non-believers are "lost."
Deluded religious fundamentalists like Harpo and the Tea Partiers are, IMO, the greatest danger humanity faces. They believe, like Dispensationalist Christian James Watt said when discussing his method of environmental management after being chosen Secretary of the Interior by Ronald Reagan, that, “We don't have to protect the environment because the Second Coming is at hand."
