It's the Greatest Threat Ever to Confront Canada. Why Can't Our Leaders Rise to the Challenge?

Rulers are a dime a dozen.   Leaders are a rare commodity.

In difficult times nations need leaders, not rulers.   The greater the difficulties that confront a state, the greater the risks  if you can't tell one from the other.

We are embarking on difficult times and, in this case, that goes for the entire world.   An era of major climate change is upon us.  We thought it wouldn't be here for at least a few decades, even generations perhaps.  We were wrong.  It's here.  It's not going away.  It is going to steadily become more disruptive, more destructive.

So where is the leadership we need so badly right this very minute and for the indefinite future?   The simple but sad answer is it's not to be found, not among the current crop of pols.   Tommy-boy Mulcair isn't rising to the challenge, neither is Trudeau the Lesser.  Sideshow Steve just wants it all to go away.

But what can they do, what should they do?   We Canadians are barely 35-million in a world of 7-plus billion, roughly one half of one percent of mankind - a drop in the humanity bucket.  That is the basis for many arguments by those who would have us do nothing.  We don't matter.  Except that we do matter.   We might not be capable of making a huge impact on a global scale  but that doesn't mean we don't have to do our share.   And, on the domestic front, there is almost no end of measures we need to implement for our own personal, selfish benefit.   And we need leadership to build the public will to do what is necessary and, in some cases, already overdue.

We need to address our long-neglected essential infrastructure that is already failing even without the coming impacts of climate change.   By one estimate, rehabilitating our national infrastructure could come with a trillion dollar price tag.   Talk about stimulus spending.   We probably can't do it all but that's part of climate change adaptation, making strategic decisions about what must be preserved and what has to be sacrificed.

We need to assess our position in light of the climate changes already setting in.   We have seen this new polar jet stream at work, bringing 96 degree temperatures into Alaska in mid-June, freezing the canals of Venice in February, and parking over Alberta to deliver devastating floods last month.

Research published last week show that climate change is increasing the frequency of ENSO events, El Nino and La Nina, that trigger floods in some places and droughts in others around the world.   We haven't even begun to figure out who this new ENSO (Southern Oscillation) situation will interact with the new Polar Jet.

A leader knows that the process begins with dialogue, getting as much information as possible to the public and then presenting ideas and building consensus.   That's what leadership is all about, leading in a way that others will follow.

If you think there's no urgency to this, that calls for action are alarmist, think again.  Simon Fraser University's Adaptation to Climate Change Team, is a think tank that monitors the onset and pace of climate change, identifies risks and opportunities for adaptation.   It has just released a study  that reveals existing and future threats to Canadian agriculture and our (your and my) food supply.

The report is blunt - our agricultural sector is in for more droughts and floods of increasing frequency and severity.   These extreme weather events are already degrading our crop production.  We urgently need to overhaul our water and agricultural policies to address what's happening.

Unfortunately, the Bitumen Buzzards that infest our legislatures and our Parliament are less inclined to support the country than to feed off its fossil fuel soaked corpse.   This goes not just for the Conservatives but for the Liberals and New Democrats alike.  What we need now is a wholesale change in our political classes.