Dear Editor:
How bad does it have to get for political leaders to act? Are they intentionally waiting for more atmospheric river floods, more deadly heat domes, more droughts and fire storms? Are they thinking that if it’s way too late and humanly impossible to halt runaway global warming that they can just throw up their hands and say we might as well party like there’s no tomorrow?
Canada’s federal and provincial Liberal, Conservative and NDP governments are playing a crazy game of proudly pledging to achieve loftier long-term goals to reduce Canada’s GHG emissions, while delaying the short-term actions without which the long-term goals become impossible to meet! Actually, during the last five years, Canada bears the shame of being the only G7 country whose GHG emissions have increased. We’ve increased our extraction of fossil fuels, most of which are shipped to and burned by countries around the world. Then we say that’s not our problem; that the countries that burn our coal, oil and gas bear the responsibility for accelerating climate change, not us.
Let’s be realistic. The only cure to this catastrophic problem is for Canada and other fossil-fuel-exporting countries to cap our fossil fuel extraction at today’s current level and reduce extraction incrementally every year until we get to carbon neutrality by 2050. That means abandoning the partially-built Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, the Coastal Gaslink pipeline and the LNG Canada export terminal being built in Kitimat, before we sink any more money into these disastrous projects. We should put the saved money into building a renewable energy economy of the future. This can be done through a just and equitable transition with good paying jobs, creating a real livable future for our children and all the life forms that currently share this one and only Earth. Why not?
Paul George, OBC, Gibsons
