It's About Climate Change

If you want to know what the future holds, consider two words -- climate change. Glen Pearson writes:

With all the unprecedented challenges facing today’s world, nothing compares to the ravages of climate change.  The argument as to whether the coming disaster is caused by human activity has now been eclipsed by the ongoing string of climate emergencies that plague every part of the globe.  Despite this, one of the world’s great governments could only muster a few dozen politicians for a climate briefing.

The melting of glaciers, droughts, floods, forest fires, rising ocean levels, dwindling freshwater supplies, the increasing extinction of species, the rapid loss of biodiversity – all these are happening at the same time and are more significant in impact than at any other period in our collective lifetime.  Somehow, trucker convoys, Donald Trump rampages, the costs of food and fuel, and the caricature nature of politics have become our fixation.

When our leaders talk about climate change, they make the right noises. But they don't make the right decisions:

Western leaders talk a good line regarding the planet but increasing numbers of less affluent nations don’t believe the words.  Democracy has become the world’s great stage, and political leaders are merely its players – not seasoned, educated visionaries of conviction and principle.  Today’s leaders have more in common with themselves than with the millions they are supposed to govern.  They embrace at global conferences, trade anecdotes, gossip about their peers, and ultimately make promises that somehow rarely come to fruition.

This is just how it is, despite all the promises that say otherwise.  Canada is faring better than most, and that says something to our credit about our politics and civil service.  Yet when it comes to climate change, we are the fifth worst polluter in the world, and the recently touted budgets of both provincial and federal governments are deemed insufficient to meet this country’s climate goals.

We are all to blame – governments, citizens, bureaucrats, businesses, special interests – and we seem unable to rise above our daily concerns to care for tomorrow’s outcomes.  Our future awaits us, and we are not reconciled to it.  Our politics is more manic than meaningful, and our citizenship more angry than aspirational.  Politics has become our primary source of entertainment, leaving us to become mere watchers and political junkies, easily overcome by the climate change forces already among us.

Is this how we will be remembered -- the generation who saw the problem and couldn't  -- or wouldn't -- do what had to be done?

Image: NASA

The Signs Are Not Good

This summer has confirmed the reality of climate change. Eugene Robinson writes:

Climate change is slow, gradual, almost imperceptible — until suddenly it’s not. One day, it seems like a normal summer. The next, the temperature soars to an unbearable 121 degrees. In Canada.

In a region where many homes are not air-conditioned, it is not yet clear how many people died from the extreme heat; in British Columbia alone, officials said there were more than 700 “sudden and unexplained” deaths during the week, three times the normal average. At least 95 deaths in Oregon are suspected of being heat-related. Dozens of deaths are being investigated in Washington state as well.

We were warned that this was going to happen.

The planet is warming because human activity has raised the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than 47 percent since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Atmospheric carbon is now at a level not seen since 3 million years ago, an epoch when average sea level was 50 to 80 feet higher than today, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

We desperately need to slash carbon emissions and stop making things worse. But we also need to reckon with the myriad implications of the damage we have already done.

That means reexamining all kinds of assumptions — however reasonable they once were — that went into the way human infrastructure has been designed and built. What seemed like normal environmental parameters may no longer apply.

And we must act now:

It means that beachfront structures in vulnerable areas should be inspected, and their safety reevaluated, in light of the impact of rising seas. It means that projects to stem worsening flooding, such as a massive 20-foot sea wall that the Army Corps of Engineers proposes for Miami, should be given new urgency. It means that the price tag for such undertakings, however daunting it may seem, must be weighed against the cost in human life of doing nothing.

It means understanding that “100-year floods” or “500-year hurricanes” will no longer confine themselves to the intervals we have assigned them. Periods that once were considered extremely wet or dry will no longer be seen as extreme; the weather bell curve has widened and the temperature bell curve is shifting measurably to the warm side.

It means being smart enough to use the spending that will be necessary to adapt to climate change as an engine of economic growth and transformation. It means seeing adaptation not just as an environmental program but as a jobs program as well.

Are we smart enough to do what is required? When so many of us are still refusing to get vaccinated against COVID, the signs are not good.

Image: ESG Clarity