These days, when it comes to issues like democracy's health and catastrophic climate change, I am feeling pretty much spent, so much so that I find it hard to write about them. Therefore, I encourage you to watch the following, which shows how Canada is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
The puny efforts of the Trudeau government to slow the pace of this unfolding disaster should be obvious to all but the most ardent of Liberal cheerleaders. Of the Conservatives, and their political posturing around this issue, I will not even speak:
You can learn more about this sad situation here.
Talk about missing the Big Picture, Lorne.
ReplyDeletePeople can't see the forest for the rapidly-disappearing trees, Owen.
Delete.. a well balanced & factual video brief, thanks
ReplyDeleteSuper Important ..
and its nice, even thrilling
to see any mainmedia grasp the obvious
We need this times a thousand.. and far more
until the message we hear is
we have stopped the headlong plunge..
not lemmings at the edge..
Not head smashed in buffalo jump
but warriors for the planet
where, last I looked
this planet - mother earth
was the first - last
& only one we gots ..
May that message get out to increasing numbers of people, Sal, but I am not hopeful it will be received in the necessary spirit.
DeleteThis is the gravest threat to ever face human civilization and so many other lifeforms on Earth. Never has humanity faced a global existential threat.
ReplyDeleteThis is killing people now and, I expect, in the course of the coming decade we will begin seeing mass dislocation and far more deaths than most of us foresee today.
I've followed the evolution of a legal theory that argues governments of the petro-states, including our own, are committing crimes against humanity. I admit my bias but the arguments are compelling. It will probably be after chaos descends that we will be yarding people like our current political leadership into the prisoner's dock to be held accountable.
It is a maxim of our criminal law that a person is deemed to intend the logical and foreseeable consequences of his acts. So, if you discharge a pistol into a crowd and kill a random bystander, that's murder, not manslaughter. You didn't intend to murder that individual but that death was the logical and foreseeable consequence of firing into the crowd so you're deemed to intend that person's death.
We're not using a gun now but something far more lethal - high-carbon fossil fuels that we race to extract and flood into world markets. As that product is burned we know it will result in more suffering and death. This is an affront to everything we imagine we are as good, decent Canadians, citizens of the world 'sans pareil.'
We lost the ability to contend we really didn't know at least as far back as the Harper era and Justin has even less excuse. His own government's report condemns him and yet he has $4.5 billion in a pointless pipeline and intends to put another 7 billion into that venture and, when it comes to incurring Alberta's wrath, he's gutless.
I read your blog everyday, Mound, and I sometimes wonder where you find the psychic reserves to write regularly on climate change. I find the issue immensely draining, I suspect because I see nothing but the worst of all scenarios ahead for all of us.
DeleteThere is another news story featuring young people that I will probably put up tomorrow, and it involves their demand that since they will suffer the most under climate disaster, it is incumbent upon politicians worldwide to address the problem with resolve and determination. I don't see that happening, but as you say, we are part of crimes against humanity, especially those young people coming along. Will they forgive us our collective obeisance to the fossil fuel industry? Why in the world would they?
I keep at this, Lorne, for the very point stressed in yesterday's report of the climate commissioner. We've largely lost the fight to avert climate change. The outcome is "effectively irreversible." It was that realization that led me to join the Dark Mountain collective several years ago.
ReplyDeleteThe critical point now is not that victory will elude us but how severe our defeat shall be. This is about Greta Thunberg and all the other Greta Thunbergs of the world. We are writing their future now and we are writing it indelibly. With every mile of new pipeline our government builds we're making it worse. With every tankerload of bitumen, our supertanker armada will make it worse.
Climate change is already causing mass displacement and death and that will continue. It's a worsening threat, effectively irreversible, and the Greta Thunbergs need and deserve every bit of adaptation and mitigation we can muster. Instead we're racing, yes "racing," to make their ordeal far worse, perhaps unsurvivable. It is hard for me, as a Canadian, to see my country embrace the vile practices of a petro-state and yet the evidence is inescapable. And so we, especially Justin's fanboys, just look the other way.