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.