Ditch the politicians who don’t believe in science
In a period of six months we go from our most extreme heat ever, with hundreds of deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance damage and wildfire fighting costs, to our worst rainfall and flooding event, with deaths so far uncounted and hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance claims and perhaps billions of dollars in road and infrastructure damage. This is exactly what the scientists have been saying we should expect over the last 30 years from pulling carbon out of the ground and burning it into the atmosphere. Yet our provincial and federal governments continue to subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of 10’s of billions of dollars for tar sands pipelines and LNG giveaways, while your favourite financial institutions fund the chaos with your investment dollars. Canada is a world leader in fossil fuel funding, subsidizing and per capita carbon emissions.
If the rest of the world behaves with the same level of ignorance and arrogance that Canada exhibits, we are in deep trouble to be sure. To paraphrase the scientific consensus on what kind of extreme weather we should expect in the years to come. “You ain’t seen nothing yet”, pretty much nails it.
Now is the time to get active, move your money, and replace politicians who feel “we are doing enough”, with people who believe the science and want to do everything in their power to minimize greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the coming storms.
David Slade
Cobble Hill BC