This letter-writer in today's print edition of The Toronto Star states what is ultimately a sad truth about us.
Canadians unwilling to make sacrifices for climate change
Re Western Canada’s heat dome may be Ontario bound.
A climate expert explains what’s next, June 29
The sad fact is that Canadians, like most of the world, will not take any responsibility for climate change if it infringes upon their daily life.
How many Canadians are willing to give up their gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks or pressure their government to ban the building of large, single-detached homes and outlet malls that contribute to global warming and eat up our precious resources?
We may moan and groan about billions of baked clams, but that’s about it. We are a consumerist society and we aren’t willing to change. The world will get hotter and we’ll shrug our shoulders. In the end, our children and grandchildren will be left holding the bag.
This is not pessimism, but reality.
Consumers aren't the problem; they're just gulliblies being led by their nose. Sorry but I find it difficult to blame consumers when the auto industry keeps making those gas guzzlers and the construction industry continues to make energy inefficient homes. I could go on but we are being led down the garden path.
ReplyDeleteToby
Clearly, Toby, there are many actors to blame in this entire melodrama. However, there are always choices open to the consumer, whether they involve driving energy-efficient vehicles or limiting driving altogether. Unfortunately, the majority, in my view, place personal convenience, comfort and an ingrained sense of entitlement before environmental considerations.
DeleteOf course, there is much industries could do to offset their carbon emissions. Our current construction practices and reliance on carbon-intensive processes such as cement and concrete production haver technical mitigation possibilities, and agricultural practices could be modified to reduce carbon release.
And those are but two examples, but such measures require strong government regulation, which our 'leaders' seem to have little appetite for.
Judging by the polls, a minority of Canadians are ready to invest Justin Trudeau with another majority government.
ReplyDeleteThat Trudeau is unfit to govern while Canada descends into a climate emergency was clear from his 'don't worry/be happy' interview with the Globe in which he threw out every hackneyed excuse for perpetuating the petro-state.
Fighting climate change will take decades, said JT. He seems to have the idea we have decades to implement change. He warned about the risk of "flipping the economy" as though the dwindling revenues Ottawa and the provinces receive from the fossil energy giants are Canada's economic lifeline. Nonsense. He talked about a 2035 target for switching entirely to electric powered vehicles as if he'll be around then to deliver. He even spoke of it as a positive feedback loop, proof that he doesn't grasp climate change theory.
At the Paris climate summit in 2015, Schellnhuber warned that our only hope of achieving the 1.5C target depended on the "induced implosion" of the fossil energy market. It depended on government action to kill off the fossil fuelers. Our prime minister won't even shut down our filthiest, climate-killing fuels - coal and bitumen. Won't hear of it.
Trudeau says all the soothing things but his deeds so rarely bear any resemblance to his words. This guy is unfit to lead Canada in these years of peril. Unfit. The others are probably worse still.
I have been reading your climate-change commentary for a long time, Mound, and you clearly know what you are talking about. Sadly, I think your last sentence sums up a political reality we cannot seem to escape from.
Delete