Bear with me while I vent a little - no, a lot.
If you want to measure the sincerity and determination of the government's efforts to thwart climate change, try this:
1. - Remember that climate change is the first existential threat that human civilization, Canada included, has faced. It is of an order of magnitude more threatening than any war in history.
2. - Realize this is a "whole of government" size problem. We need to harness the entire power and resources of our governments, federal and provincial, to this effort.
3. - Measure the magnitude of the danger, and the resources available to respond to it against what these governments are actually doing which is not very much.
The economy remains Justin Trudeau's singular priority. It remains Cathy McKenna's priority. This is why we're left with a grimly laughable carbon tax response.
These people know the degree of decarbonization that will be required to meet the threshold of a 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050 and it is only fear of the electorate that keeps them from scoffing at it in public.
I was relieved to see their own commissioner's report recognize that it is "effectively irreversible" but, as I've been writing for a number of years, what we do now will determine how much worse, even deadlier it will be for our young and future generations.
We do have the fate of the future in our hands, just as Greta Thunberg and her school climate strikers remind us, and promoting the extraction and export of highly toxic, high-carbon fossil fuels, precisely when we need to be going just as fast as we can in the opposite direction, is monstrous.
There are monsters among us.
Yes, the will of Justin "No one would just leave it in the ground" Trudeau is monstrous. The will of his environment minister is monstrous. The will of the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition is monstrous. The will of the premiers working to derail even a minuscule carbon tax is monstrous.
Bold as it is to say this, what they're doing represent crimes against humanity and yet almost none of us can get our heads around that. We're Canadians, citizens of the world sans pareil. Canadians are nice. Canadians are caring, generous, compassionate. Canadians aren't the kind to line their pockets at the expense of the lives of little brown people from poor and vulnerable countries in distant lands. To all of that - "bollocks."
Yes, the will of Justin "No one would just leave it in the ground" Trudeau is monstrous. The will of his environment minister is monstrous. The will of the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition is monstrous. The will of the premiers working to derail even a minuscule carbon tax is monstrous.
Bold as it is to say this, what they're doing represent crimes against humanity and yet almost none of us can get our heads around that. We're Canadians, citizens of the world sans pareil. Canadians are nice. Canadians are caring, generous, compassionate. Canadians aren't the kind to line their pockets at the expense of the lives of little brown people from poor and vulnerable countries in distant lands. To all of that - "bollocks."
There are several papers on accelerating climate change as a crime against humanity. This one, at Jacobin Magazine, summarizes the case without resorting to frustrating legalese.
There is no excuse any more for pretending we don't know what that stench is pouring from those chimneys. We know full well.
There is no excuse any more for pretending we don't know what that stench is pouring from those chimneys. We know full well.
