If you're planning on being around for another two or three decades you'll be witness to a world like you've never known it. What's in store for you is a darker, more dangerous and, ultimately, dystopian world as nature re-calibrates the biosphere. Talk about death by natural causes only on a civilizational scale.
We know there's still time, just barely, to avert the worst impacts of climate change and biodiversity collapse. We know what must be done, that's been clearly spelled out for us. We know what we must do but we're not going to do it.
Recently Bloomberg has reported that the Trudeau government is expected to give the go-ahead for the three-fold expansion of the Trans-Mountain pipeline next month. In a lovely companion piece yesterday, Bloomberg observed that "Even Trudeau's Canada Won't Rid Itself of Coal."
"Even Trudeau's Canada" what is that implying? That Justin Trudeau isn't totally in the bag for the fossil fuel industries - gas, oil, bitumen, coal. He's in it up to his eyeballs. That carbon tax nonsense, that's to make the rubes happy.
Petro-states are notorious liars and Canada is no exception whether it's ruled by Conservatives or Liberals. They're both profoundly dishonest. Both will sacrifice the future, perhaps irreparably, for the present. I'm sorry Liberals but that's true.
A recent article in New York Magazine spoke of a "globe-spanning murder-suicide" now underway.
Human beings are more prosperous and numerous than we’ve ever been, while the Earth’s other species are dying off faster than at any time in human history.
These two conditions are related. But if the second one persists long enough, we will be following our fellow organisms into the dustbin of geological history.
...Climate change is a major driver of all this death, but burning fossil fuels is far from our species’ only method of mass ecocide. We are also harvesting fish populations faster than they can reproduce themselves, annually dumping upward of 300 million tons of heavy metals and toxic sludge into the oceans, introducing devastating diseases and invasive species into vulnerable environments as we send people and goods hurtling across the globe, and simply taking up too much space — about 75 percent of the Earth’s land, and 85 percent of its wetlands, have been severely altered or destroyed by human development.Some day you may see prime ministers such as Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau for what are - monsters. By then it will be much too late to do anything about our collapsed ecosystems and the ravages of climate change. The windows of opportunity for dealing with these existential threats are fast closing and, if we were determined to act you would already know about it.
Some hyper-zealous Liberals are fond of extolling fine "Canadian values." Really, what values? We gave up on that decades ago when we succumbed to the embrace of the neoliberal order, something perpetuated today by Mr. Trudeau and almost certain to be continued by the winner of our general elections in October. If life is not our priority, if the fate being dealt to future generations doesn't guide our planning and policy, our "Canadian values" are, in a word, shite.
A globe-spanning murder-suicide it will be then. We had a choice. We made a choice.
