Tuesday, August 06, 2019

Let's Stop Feeding Ourselves a Diet of Terrible Lies


It finally struck me that you can only go so far with climate blogging.  At first there was some utility to it, relating the latest science showing that it's real, we made it, and there's going to be Hell to pay if we neglected the warnings. It was important to get the word out, in circulation.

I took online courses, even with Germany's Potsdam Institute, and I devoured the reports as they at first trickled in and then gently came in and then, finally, gushed in. It wasn't just global warming any more. The dangers evolved, became more complex. There was talk in some corners of mass extinction. Too late, it seems, came warnings of a collapse of biodiversity and the loss of wildlife. Sea ice, glaciers and ice caps that we were warned might be lost by the end of the century began to recede at rates no one had anticipated.  Every year seemed to bring a new deal, always more intractable, ever more urgent.

I think we've been at this juncture for a while but have been unwilling to accept the unacceptable.  We must not impede the economy, so we're told. We must preserve the economy, at least until the environment crushes our economy.  Only we won't acknowledge that we're hastening that outcome.

As I write this I now realize that I'm speaking to an audience with an entirely different mindset from those of today's young people who see this catastrophe heading for them.  Not for us. Why we'll probably be gone by then. It won't be long, they'll think of something.

We speak of climate change in the context of our sense of it. No matter how concerned we imagine ourselves, whether you're thirty or eighty, you know there's a reasonably good chance you'll get out relatively unscathed.  Those kids - today's grade-schoolers and teenagers, their reality is not the same. Climate change has a far greater significance to them. It will shape their lives. It may even end them.

Why, when it's their necks on the line, should we tailor our response to climate change and other existential threats to our wants and needs - the same wants and needs that created the mess these kids will endure? Isn't that akin to simply writing them off? And for what?

What would our policies be if they were tailored to the preservation of a viable future for today's under-20s? What if they were the priority, not us? Would Trudeau be boasting shamelessly that no one would leave that bitumen in the ground when leaving that bitumen in the ground is precisely what climate science tells us we must do out of regard for humanity?

When we discuss climate change it is not only in the context of the 30 to 80 year old population but also in the narrowed focus of Canada. We don't consider how many people will be displaced or suffer any of a number of scourges such as food insecurity or will simply die from our quest to reap the illusory rewards of bitumen. People in distant lands are already losing their homelands and, in some cases, their lives. How much meaning does that hold for Mr. Trudeau or, for that matter, the rest of us? Not much at all.

Our political caste have intertwined climate change with the petro-economy. One, the need for action on climate change, must not impair the other, our economy.  Would we be falling for that depraved nonsense if the consequences were more immediate, say five years? Of course not. We would be storming the Bastille of Parliament Hill demanding we be spared that scourge. Only we see those very consequences as a problem for the future, 30 or 40 years down the road. Not-Our-Problem.

Canadians are a self-congratulatory lot. We enjoy our myths about supposed Canadian values. We see ourselves as exemplars to the world. It's a rich diet of self-serving lies.

It's reached a point where Canada's petro-economy is becoming ghoulish. The ghouls - Trudeau, Scheer, Kenney, Moe have us on the road to climate disaster. Consider their policies in light of this from The Washington Post.
On Monday, scientists officially pronounced July 2019 the warmest month the world has experienced since record-keeping began more than a century ago. 
How hot was it? 
Wildfires raged across millions of acres in the Arctic. A massive ice melt in Greenland sent 197 billion tons of water pouring into the Atlantic Ocean, raising sea levels. And temperature records evaporated, one after another: 101.7 degrees Fahrenheit in Cambridge, England, and 108.7 in Paris. The same in Lingen, Germany.
Scientists found that the planet is headed for one of its hottest years, and the period from 2015 to 2019 is likely to go down as the warmest five-year period on record (the next four years are predicted to be hotter yet). 
“July has rewritten climate history, with dozens of new temperature records at [the] local, national and global level,” Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in announcing the month’s historic implications. 
“This is not science fiction. It is the reality of climate change. It is happening now, and it will worsen in the future without urgent climate action."
And if you think this looming disaster doesn't have our political leaders' fingerprints all over it, think again. Better yet, ask David Suzuki.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, many people we elect to represent our interests aren’t acting quickly enough — and some not at all. Even those who speak to the necessity of reining in global heating continue to promote further fossil fuel development, ignoring alarming statistics about temperature rise and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations
Youth climate activist Greta Thunberg recently told French politicians she never hears journalists, politicians or businessmen mention the dire numbers. 
“It’s almost like you don’t even know these numbers exist. As if you haven’t even read the latest IPCC report, on which much of the future of our civilization is depending. Or perhaps you are simply not mature enough to tell it like it is. Because even that burden, you leave to us children,” she said. 
Rather than advocating for economic diversification and growing clean tech opportunities in the face of climate chaos and declining prospects for coal, oil and gas, many Canadian politicians continue to exaggerate the economic importance of dirty bitumen and fracked gas and downplay the negative consequences of processing, transporting and burning them
Even proven methods for slowing global heating, such as carbon pricing, have become contentious. 
We no longer have time to piss around. There’s room for discussion about the most effective ways to address the climate crisis, but ultimately we have to deploy every solution available and keep developing new ones — including energy conservation and efficiency, carbon pricing, public transit, vehicle and industrial electrification, clean energy technologies, education and family planning to empower women and slow population growth, reducing consumerism and more.
Scheer, Kenney, Moe, and, yes, Trudeau - they don't have the answers we need. They're the problem. 

9 comments:

  1. .. its a nightmare Mound
    few can see it coming though
    evan less can comprehend it

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  2. We kick the can down the road, Mound, unconcerned about who comes after us. Isn't that the definition of narcissism?

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  3. Sal we live in a state of self-induced myopia. We do not see what we choose to avoid and that isn't always easily done but we prevail.

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  4. Owen, I don't know if you've read Jared Diamond's book, "Collapse," but he has an interesting discussion on how decisions taken in the moment can be thoroughly 'rational' even if they clearly spell doom for future generations. That sort of thinking tends to precede societal collapse. Every element of this thinking that Diamond lays out is now present in today's policy-making.

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  5. You are preaching to the choir, Mound. The information, if not the urgency, has been around for at least 50 years but most people have little to no knowledge of it. Stupidity reigns. Hell, there's an army of idiots installing eaves-troughs who don't understand that water runs down hill and another army of bikers claiming they need loud exhaust as a safety feature with no understanding of the Doppler Effect. If the vast majority can't grasp the basics how on earth can we teach something as complicated as the world is heating up? How long did it take for the majority to truly get that the world is round?

    The part that really infuriates me is that our political leaders do nothing. They are certainly well briefed yet they act as if there is no urgency. They lack the courage to do what needs to be done.

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  6. There's little question that our political caste present a near-insurmountable hurdle to effective action on climate change.

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  7. .. 'leadership' to me might be this ..

    We are going to save our wild species on our lands and in our waters

    We are going to focus on feeding a starving world.. and how to irrigate it
    Those will be primary areas of investment, stewardship..
    Inner city agriculture will be top of mind

    We will grow and move grain
    We will refine and enhance knowledge and expertise
    of all agricultural aspects.. we will lead the world

    We will be the 'go to' nation re water conservation, preservation & irrigation

    We will distribute, aid and place climate and war refugees across Canada
    We will not let them languish in our largest city suburbs
    yet they will be encouraged to find others of their culture or nature
    or their religions freely..

    We will never tell people they cannot wear a spaghegtti collander
    or pasta strainer or head scarf at work or play or during worship..

    We will triple erase all electoral voter databases .. ban them

    We will hold useful town halls and plebesites
    in order to remove 'first past the post' election failures

    We shall dismiss crapola political animals at our discretion
    and they shalt not be paid a single dime or pension

    (I have more.. but will hold fire.. just for now)

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  8. You've described what would be an extremely interesting country, Sal.

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  9. It scares the heck out of me. Anyong

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