I've been working on a post about this. Fits and starts sort of thing. One thought that keeps popping up is how, in Canada and even more in the United States, the sense that climate change represents an existential emergency is so weak. There is no widespread perception of immediacy even though we've been warned that we have two years to arrest the collapse of biodiversity, twelve years to slash GHG emissions by half (with all the restructuring of societies and economies that protends), etc, etc.
We remain, as much by choice as anything else, in some sleepwalking state. We still move but we're not fully conscious. Our governments avoid speaking to us about our "national emergency." There is no emergency. A band-aid response of a minuscule carbon tax is all that's on offer. And, while that at least goes to mitigation, our government is a deaf mute when it comes to the costly stuff - climate change adaptation to deal with extremes of temperature, severe storm events, floods and droughts, wildfires, sea level rise, and such.
Bad as the Trudeau government is, we can expect nothing better and likely far worse from Scheer.
Liberal or Conservative and, as we've seen with Alberta's Notley, even the NDP are dragging their feet even in the face of evidence that the clock is running out. Their indifference, I believe, translates into a good deal of the public's apathy. No one is mobilizing the public to get behind what is ultimately survival. It wasn't that many years ago I would not believe today's civilizational failure possible.
I am as astounded and saddened as you are, Mound. That we pay no heed to our impending doom as a species is either outright arrogance, stupidity, or selfishness, or a combination of all three, it seems to me.
I've been working on a post about this. Fits and starts sort of thing. One thought that keeps popping up is how, in Canada and even more in the United States, the sense that climate change represents an existential emergency is so weak. There is no widespread perception of immediacy even though we've been warned that we have two years to arrest the collapse of biodiversity, twelve years to slash GHG emissions by half (with all the restructuring of societies and economies that protends), etc, etc.
ReplyDeleteWe remain, as much by choice as anything else, in some sleepwalking state. We still move but we're not fully conscious. Our governments avoid speaking to us about our "national emergency." There is no emergency. A band-aid response of a minuscule carbon tax is all that's on offer. And, while that at least goes to mitigation, our government is a deaf mute when it comes to the costly stuff - climate change adaptation to deal with extremes of temperature, severe storm events, floods and droughts, wildfires, sea level rise, and such.
Bad as the Trudeau government is, we can expect nothing better and likely far worse from Scheer.
Liberal or Conservative and, as we've seen with Alberta's Notley, even the NDP are dragging their feet even in the face of evidence that the clock is running out. Their indifference, I believe, translates into a good deal of the public's apathy. No one is mobilizing the public to get behind what is ultimately survival. It wasn't that many years ago I would not believe today's civilizational failure possible.
I am as astounded and saddened as you are, Mound. That we pay no heed to our impending doom as a species is either outright arrogance, stupidity, or selfishness, or a combination of all three, it seems to me.
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