Angry in the Great White North

It was nearly two years ago when Stephane Dion, Liberal Party leader, announced that Elizabeth May would not face a Liberal candidate in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova:

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion will not run a Liberal candidate against Green party Leader Elizabeth May in the next federal election, the first time the Liberals won't plan on having a full slate of candidates.

CBC News has learned that leaders will say Friday that "out of our shared commitment to a greener Canada, we are not running candidates in each other's ridings."

CBC's chief political correspondent Keith Boag said the Liberals gain a credible ally on the environment, something Canadians continue to rank as one of the most important issues.

Boag said that May is widely respected for her judgment about climate change and that she will send a clear signal Friday that she thinks Dion would make a better prime minister on that issue than Harper.

Presumably Michael Ignatieff will not enjoy a similar endorsement.  Indeed, Michael Ignatieff repudiated Stephane Dion's Green Shift carbon tax, the idea that made him a sweetheart to many environmentally-minded voters:

Michael Ignatieff used an appearance in Alberta to slam his predecessor's carbon tax plan as the new Liberal leader opened his party's latest attempt to win back the West.

"You can't win elections if you're adding to the input costs of a farmer putting diesel into his tractor, or you're adding to the input costs of a fisherman putting diesel into his fishing boat, or a trucker transporting goods," he said yesterday in Edmonton.

Speaking of former leader Stephane Dion's Green Shift plan, which would have sharply raised taxes on energy, Ignatieff told reporters: "You've got to work with the grain of Canadians and not against them. I think we learned a lesson in the last election."

Michael Ignatieff is busily ejecting all remaining vestiges of Stephane Dion's leadership.  In part this is to put his own mark on the party, but the thoroughness with which Stephane Dion's green-ness is being purged goes farther than that.  You see it in the way Michael Ignatieff combined the role of energy and environmental critic, signaling that the Liberal Party would consider environmental policies only in the context of meeting the energy needs of Canadians.

None of this -- tossing aside the Green Shift, combining energy and environmental issues, and doing no electoral favours for Elizabeth May -- is going to win friends in the environmental movement.  It will likely cost votes that Stephane Dion's policies won for the Liberal Party.

But then the last election had the Liberals end up with one of their worst showings ever.

So I think it's safe to say that Elizabeth May's endorsement wasn't worth all that much, and might have cost the Liberals in the end.

This is not a price Michael Ignatieff is willing to pay. 

And that is a perfect metaphor for environmentalism in general, and Elizabeth May's flavour of environmentalism in particular.  It is demanding and costly, and if you embrace it, you end up poorer for it, but no closer to any sort of environmental nirvana.

In other words, it is useless.

Elizabeth May embodies that uselessness, and Michael Ignatieff has no time for useless things.