How Do You Like Your Kids, Roasted, Toasted, Fried or Grilled?

"And to Monsieur Harper, I Can Only Say This"

Oh so conservative head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Legard, says the world is staring down the double barrels of climate change and resource scarcity.   She just couldn't get much more blunt and to the point in her comments at the World Economic Forum, Davos.

"...the most startling statements came from the heads of those bastions of economic orthodoxy: the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF and a former finance minister in the conservative government of Nicolas Sarkozy, pointed to critical pivot points for the economic future.

Her final pivot: “Increasing vulnerability from resource scarcity and climate change, with the potential for major social and economic disruption: This is the real wild card in the pack.” She went on to call climate change “the greatest economic challenge of the 21st century.” This from the head of the IMF.

Ms. Lagarde concluded with a call for a new kind of economic growth. “So we need growth, but we also need green growth that respects environmental sustainability. Good ecology is good economics. This is one reason why getting carbon pricing right and removing fossil fuel subsidies are so important.”

In response to a question from the audience, she said: “Unless we take action on climate change, future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled.”

Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, went so far as to insist that climate change be at the top of the Davos agenda, along with finance and growth, “because global warming imperils all of the development gains we have made.”

They're not really saying anything radical.   All the science is right there and the extreme weather events that have so changed the world's climate, particularly since the turn of the century, are right there too, we even have the records to prove it.   But they're living in a science and fact-based world, the world of reality.

Our boy, Steve, doesn't believe science, he doesn't trust facts.  In his warped, fundamentalist mind, reality is what you believe it is, not what is shown by science or fact.

So malformed is Steve's thinking that he cannot grasp that his very goals - families, safety, pride and the economy - cannot be improved without taking direct and effective action on climate change.   To the contrary, Steve is consigning our families, their safety, our pride in Canada and our economy itself to decline and suffering if he fails to actually lead our country and safeguard us from the worst impacts of climate change.   Yet, instead of doing that, Steve is Hellbent on flooding the world with as much high-carbon fossil fuels as possible.   So warped is Steve's thinking that he still considers himself the smartest man he knows and we'll pay dearly for that.