Monday, September 24, 2018

When the Most Important Issue to You Is Not Important to Your Government.



To me, climate change is the most important issue, hands down. It is the greatest threat facing human civilization today, probably the greatest threat in the history of human civilization. It has already reached the point where some scientists, people who find their truth in knowledge and evidence, are warning we're on the verge of triggering a mass extinction event. Climate change is happening now. It is claiming lives now. It's only getting started. All the severe weather events? That's only the 'early onset' stuff. Imagine what you're going to be experiencing over the course of just the next decade. Hint: you can't.

And the most infuriating thing to me is how our government is responding to climate change - both mitigation and adaptation. How is it preparing Canada for the future that will be our kids' and our grandkids' inescapable reality?

Forget the Tories, when it comes to climate change even the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau is dead at the switch.  As David Suzuki puts it, "When it comes to the environment, the only growth industry in Ottawa these days is spin doctoring."

Michael Harris brands the environment the Liberals biggest failure.
When David Suzuki called for the resignation of Environment Minister Catherine McKenna this week, it was a far bigger development than merely asking a disappointing politician to step aside. 
Suzuki knows, along with everyone else, that McKenna is not going anywhere, hypocrite or not. In part, that is because she is merely advancing the prime minister’s agenda, and in part because the day of politicians resigning over principle is over.

...Just as Stephen Harper never considered throwing in the towel as Conservative leader when he was found in contempt of Parliament. These days, unless someone has a videotape of a bloody murder, elected officials hang on with all ten toes, no matter what they have done — or in McKenna’s case, what they have not done. 
Although Suzuki is not likely to bring about a change in the Trudeau cabinet by asking that McKenna step down, he has definitely not fired a blank either. What the country’s leading environmentalist has done by calling out McKenna is call out the Trudeau government on its signal failure — the environment. And that could significantly alter the coalition that delivered a majority government to the Liberals in 2015.
...Instead, and despite McKenna’s early promises of setting a bolder course on reducing carbon emission rates, Canada went to the Paris Climate talks with Harper’s targets. The whole thing turned into a group hug of self-appointed and smug planet-savers from 175 countries and the European Union. They were more than happy to endorse a deal that was not legally binding. It was rhetoric without the requirement for results — political Nirvana for the short-term thinkers who run the world. 
The Paris Accord may have been a temporary PR victory for the Liberals, but it was actually the ghost of Kyoto. After all, as prime ministers including Jean Chrétien, Harper and now Trudeau have proven, it doesn’t matter what target you set for greenhouse gas reductions, if you don’t do anything about meeting them. 
The great charade of Paris merely continues the history over the last 20 years of politicians doing squat about seriously confronting global warming.
If you have a majority government and yet cannot respond to a grave and imminent danger, a potentially existential threat, to your country and its people, you're an obstruction. You're unfit for office. When time is fast running out to act and our best remaining options are slipping through our fingers, you're harming the country and, especially, our future generations and by what right?

How does anyone support a government that turns its back on the safety of the country and, by its indifference and neglect, places our nation and our young people in harm's way? I don't get it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

and the second is all the poor women living way below the poverty line in a country like Canada through no fault of their own.....Anyong