We’re not doing the right things on climate, not even close

We could decide to restrict our climate mitigation planning and policies to only those that do not negatively effect our economy (GDP) either nationally or regionally.

We could decide the consequences (for us) of rising temperatures are not as big a risk as mitigation policies that could lead to economic dislocation, nationally or regionally.

But the consequences of our production and use of fossil fuels today are predicted to last for centuries — the greenhouse gases (GHGs) we are putting into the biosphere and the additional heat trapped in our climate system will negatively effect a multitude of generations far into the future in ways that can be labelled existential because they threaten our global civilization and maybe even humanity itself.

Imagine yourself in the position of a descendant 50 or 100 years into the future — would he or she approve of our arbitrary decision to restrict climate mitigation to only what was safe economically?

For three decades we have agreed that climate change was a genuine threat and promised action. But we have never come close to meeting our emission reduction targets. Instead we continue to allow and even subsidize new investment and infrastructure to expand fossil fuel production.

We have agreed that climate is a building existential threat; we have agreed to international treaties to reduce GHG emissions so as not to exceed a 2C rise in global temperature. But we are restricted to an outdated conception of mitigation with policies that must not negatively effect the economy. This will lead (if all of the world’s nations acted like Canada) to at least a 3C rise in global temperature (and the increasingly possible cascade of feedbacks that would lead to a hellish Hothouse Earth in our descendants future).

The discovery of the children’s bodies at a residential school in Kamloops and the continuing terrorist acts against Muslims (and other vulnerable minorities) has raised the possibility that Canada is a racist country.

Far, far worse, is the possibility that we are uncaringly inflicting catastrophe on the most vulnerable in the world today and our kids and their kids and all we love and care about in the future, by arbitrarily limiting our responsibility out of short-term self-interest today. We are not doing the right thing, not even considering the right thing. Decades ago we should have regulated an end to new investment and infrastructure while winding down all production and use of fossil fuels as quickly as was feasible.

Our lack of responsible action and continuing negligence on climate should be the subject of a highest level, open and empowering investigation. We must urgently come to grips with our continuing failure to act responsibly on the foremost challenge of our time. We live in a country with pretend climate leaders and pretend climate mitigation. Those in power are still working hard to protect economic interests from urgently needed climate action.