Today's UN report warning of mass extinction has been enough to send Trudeau backers depicting our prime minister as some environmental savior. Wrong, wrong and wrong.
Trudeau is an avowed neoliberal, a devotee of perpetual exponential growth. His mentality is what lurks behind the UN report.
I wish Justin Trudeau was the environmentalist his boosters claim that he is but, boil it all down, and it comes to "he's not as bad as Scheer." So what? This is the prime minister who bet $4.5 billion on a pipeline to flood world markets with high-carbon, high-cost, low-value bitumen. You have to be a lunatic to proclaim that guy a champion of the environment.
Here's the thing. If Trudeau doesn't come up with a credible plan to slash Canada's carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 he's a problem, not a solution. If he can't come up with a credible path to free us from this neoliberal model that compulsively chases perpetual exponential growth then he's a problem, not a solution. We're out of time for waiting on problems to deliver solutions that never arrive.
Here's the path we're on. It's called "overshoot."
Biodiversity is an integral part of our planet's environmental carrying capacity. Like other aspects of the environment it's already degrading. We're still trying to push that red line higher and higher. That's our prime minister's overarching priority. Humankind has driven the planet into overshoot, exceeding the environment's carrying capacity by a factor of 1.7 and that number grows year by year. The environment simply can no longer carry our consumption. It's losing capacity and fairly rapidly. You can see how this ends and that red line is the path our leaders have chosen for us.
You can tell yourself whatever you want about Justin. That doesn't make it so.
4 comments:
It seems that as a people, Mound, we are more inclined to indulge in pleasing fantasies than confront harsh reality. Now, that reality is becoming harder and harder to ignore.
Every government since, and including, Chretien's has sought to deflect blame for our inaction on climate change on some scapegoat.
I think we'll see plenty of action once the window for dealing with these threats is nearly closed.
Now Trudeau's most ardent fans are falling back on martyrdom. JT is the victim of external forces, principally from Alberta. The poor little guy's hands are tied. Oh dear. Anyone who doesn't buy that is simply "ghastly."
What I want in October is a minority government, preferably with the Greens holding the balance of power.
Majority governments like today's Liberals and yesterday's Tories are supposed to get things done, make things happen. They don't. That adds insult to the injury of being saddled with false majorities with the support of less than two out of five votes.
Harper set modest goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, far short of what's demanded today to have some chance of averting catastrophic climate change. Justin's government is falling behind on Harper's goals. It's pathetic.
With organizations like this meddling in our politics it is hard to imagine that we won't reelect the status quo.
Dark Money in Conservative Politics: The Shadowy American Nonprofit Bankrolling Canada’s Conservative Movement
https://north99.org/2018/02/08/dark-money-conservative-politics-shadowy-american-nonprofit-bankrolling-canadas-conservative-movement/
The Americans get fussed about Russians mucking around in US politics but they have no qualms about meddling in ours.
And, yes, most voters will fall for it.
As the United Fruit Company and British American Petroleum demonstrated, the US government won't hesitate to not just interfere but forcefully intervene to topple non-compliant governments from South and Central America, to Iran, to Vietnam, Haiti - "Coups R Us"
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