This is straight out of the National Rifle Association playbook.
Whenever America suffers another mass shooting (several times weekly of late), the NRA and the gun lobby along with their political gun bearers respond predictably - "this is no time for debating gun control." No, let everybody grieve and then later, much later, when this has largely faded from memory, then you can whinge about gun control, you damned pinko. In the meantime, STFU snowflake.
Now let's turn to the Toronto Sun. This time it's not a mass shooting but climate change and the flooding in Eastern Canada. Here's the Sun's take on it.
Now is the time to come together and help people. We can have other conversations later, when the waters recede.
But apparently not everyone is willing to abide by that common sense rule. Not politicians. Not Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
While visiting a flood centre, the PM just couldn’t help himself and had to get in a dig about his pet issue, climate change.
Speaking in French, Trudeau called such floods a “new reality” then added, in English, “we also have to reflect that with climate change we’re going to see more and more of these extreme weather events more regularly. It means we have to think about adaptation, mitigation and how we’re going to move forward together.”
There is of course no way to link a weather event to climate change right as it is happening.
It’s unbelievably crass for the PM to make these comments while in the presence of people forced out of their homes.
Let’s focus on helping people. Hold the lectures for later.
It's not "crass for the PM" to make those remarks. It's entirely appropriate and I only wish he would acknowledge how the petro-state, all the petro-states including ours, do so much to contribute to this loss and suffering.
What's crass is for the Sun to ape the NRA in its greasy respose.
There was somebody on the radio this morning talking about the floods. Over and over again she used the word adaptation. From Trudeau on down the government seems to have dropped talk of fighting climate change and now talk about adapting to it. Anything as obvious as ending subsidies to carbon extraction industries, well that's off the table.
ReplyDeleteMaybe, just maybe ( in my dreams) Trudeau has no intention at all of seeing the TC pipeline built.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he is stalling due to the inevitability that renewables will in the not too distant future be the energy source of choice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackenzie_Valley_Pipeline
It's happened before!
Maybe I have my head up my rear orifice or maybe Trudeau will die a hero!
TB
ReplyDeleteToby, Canada is not on a mitigation path. If anything we're increasing emissions, making climate change worse. What's left except adaptation? Ideally all nations should be pursuing both but that's not for us.
TB, I can give you 4.5 billion reasons why your suggestion is wishful thinking. If Morneau had gone down there and offered those Texas bandits, Kinder Morgan, $2.5 billion that still would have handed them a decent profit.
ReplyDeleteI think it's pretty cheesy for the Libs to now be talking about deferring the pipeline decision until after the election.