Living in the real world of climate change

In my quest for the last ten signatures on my nomination papers (if you’d like to support me, and you’re a member of the Liberal Party of Canada, click on Nomination Form; if you’re not yet a member, it costs $10 at Membership Forms), I was talking in Penticton with a smart young local winemaker. She told me her biggest single political concern was that the federal government was not addressing environmental issues. We talked about our glorious dryland environment, and the care it took to grow grapes and grasses, and to keep the land healthy. We talked about the warming of the earth. We talked about our responsibilities, to her children and to my grandchildren.

I came home and looked up what the Prime Minister had to say:
“Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations. . . . It focuses on carbon dioxide, which is essential to life, rather than upon pollutants.”
Minister Day has joked:
“Maybe all my constituents living high up on the West Bench, or Lakeview Heights, or the hills of Logan Lake will soon be sitting on lakeside property as one of the many benefits of global warming”.

Here in the dry Interior of BC we know differently. We live in, we see and feel the changes, and we’re concerned. We are concerned about the masses of dead pine trees and the millions of hectares of dead timber to be fuel for the fires to come, we’re concerned about groundwater and snowpack and our rivers, we see grapes being grown farther and farther north. Because we know these things right here and right now, we feel them strongly. Instead of being a voice of denial, we want to talk out loud about the coming storms.

The data is undeniable – humans are putting carbon into the atmosphere at a rate which is causing systemic changes in climate systems. We are all aware of that. If we kept business accounts for the planet, it would be clear that we’ve been stripping assets off the balance sheet for years to pad the income statement. We convince ourselves we’re getting richer every day by consuming the wealth around us. It’s like being in England during the second world war, burning the furniture to keep warm.

It’s past the time we chose different paths, to reduce net carbon emissions worldwide, and to adapt to and mitigate the damage from the changes that are already inevitable. Canadians should be among the leaders in looking for solutions – because of our climate and geography, we use more energy per person than any other country in the world. And the solutions we come up with – despite what you hear from the moneyed classes that we can’t compete with Americans – will be among the best in the world. We are smart tough people, and we’ve been dealing with hard problems since we began this country here in the frozen north. Our government needs to encourage this, not to write it off because they think it may cost us a half-point of GDP growth from the tarsands. For example, without changing laws or regulations or taxes, but just by changing its buying practices, the federal government can shift demand away from carbon and provide critical new demand to home-grown suppliers to produce all sorts of useful technologies and products.

We are all good people at heart. We know we cannot disclaim our responsibilities towards our neighbours, or to people far away. No matter what we do or how hard we work, no matter what “solutions” may be found, we know that over the next sixty to eighty years tens of millions of people will be displaced by rising water; they will move to places where tens of millions of people already live. It’s happening now – the inhabitants of the Maldive Islands are trying to buy a new homeland, because theirs will be underwater soon – and it’s not going to get better. What are going to be worldwide strategies for adaptation and mitigation? How can we best assist with formulating them? What can individuals do alone and in our communities?

We, with our direct experience and felt sense of the changes, can add a sense of importance and urgency to these things. Our nation has become an international joke – a repeat winner of the Dinosaur Award. We used to have reasons to feel proud out there in the world, rather than being a bit ashamed. Never before could anyone be embarrassed simply by being Canadian.

From right here where it’s happening, we can lead discussions and policy choices nationally, take such action locally as we can and must, and help Canada regain its place among the progressive nations of the world.


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With gratitude,

John