Dedicated to the Restoration of Progressive Democracy
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
2X Faster - a Weather Network Documentary
The time for dithering is gone. We need a government more committed to the fight against climate change than any we've ever known. We need an "induced implosion" of the petro-economy and that's just for starters.
Thanks for the link, Mound. I watched a couple of the videos. In one there was our Environment Minister explaining that it is all getting worse and that (get ready for this) we are all going to have to adapt. There's that word adapt again. She has nothing about what government has to do such as eliminating subsidies to carbon industries or shutting down the tar sands. Frankly, the interviewer let her get away with pre-election political spiel. That doesn't help.
Re: Toby's comment. I have noticed the shift as well from mitigation to emphasis on adaptation. Now that the evidence is irrefutable, the Right has started to change its tact.
I suppose adaptation is the more "near term" object and projects such as floodways are an easier sell to the public and far better for political chest beating. Played right, it can be the next "shiny thing" when you pull out some otherwise insignificant programme and use it to show you're really on top of the problem.
Real adaptation for Canada, including replacement, repair and rehabilitation of our essential infrastructure, could cost many hundreds of billions of dollars but this is where the politicians best friend comes in, the low-hanging fruit. Some adaptation will be massively expensive but some is relatively cheap. So watch them scramble for the cheap stuff first leaving the costly and usually more critical stuff for someone else to worry about.
Mitigation, i.e. the 50 per cent by 2030 stuff, has few of the convenient political benefits. Future generations won't be voting for the government of today. So why would any self-serving government (and that's all of them today) want to put its money into that, especially when mitigation is inevitably disruptive to any carbon-based economy?
The motion Corbyn's Labour intends to table in the House in Westminster today for a declaration of a climate national emergency is particularly threatening because it might bridge the mitigation/adaptation divide. Uniting the two branches of climate change challenges is something to be dreaded by the right and the centre-right.
3 comments:
Thanks for the link, Mound. I watched a couple of the videos. In one there was our Environment Minister explaining that it is all getting worse and that (get ready for this) we are all going to have to adapt. There's that word adapt again. She has nothing about what government has to do such as eliminating subsidies to carbon industries or shutting down the tar sands. Frankly, the interviewer let her get away with pre-election political spiel. That doesn't help.
Re: Toby's comment. I have noticed the shift as well from mitigation to emphasis on adaptation. Now that the evidence is irrefutable, the Right has started to change its tact.
I suppose adaptation is the more "near term" object and projects such as floodways are an easier sell to the public and far better for political chest beating. Played right, it can be the next "shiny thing" when you pull out some otherwise insignificant programme and use it to show you're really on top of the problem.
Real adaptation for Canada, including replacement, repair and rehabilitation of our essential infrastructure, could cost many hundreds of billions of dollars but this is where the politicians best friend comes in, the low-hanging fruit. Some adaptation will be massively expensive but some is relatively cheap. So watch them scramble for the cheap stuff first leaving the costly and usually more critical stuff for someone else to worry about.
Mitigation, i.e. the 50 per cent by 2030 stuff, has few of the convenient political benefits. Future generations won't be voting for the government of today. So why would any self-serving government (and that's all of them today) want to put its money into that, especially when mitigation is inevitably disruptive to any carbon-based economy?
The motion Corbyn's Labour intends to table in the House in Westminster today for a declaration of a climate national emergency is particularly threatening because it might bridge the mitigation/adaptation divide. Uniting the two branches of climate change challenges is something to be dreaded by the right and the centre-right.
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