Will Justin Fish or Will He Continue to Cut Bait?

 

The master of over-promising and under-delivering, Justin Trudeau, will need something better than glib assurances and fanciful aspirations when president Biden convenes his virtual summit on climate change this week.

Between Biden's summit and the COP26 climate conference in Britain this fall, world leaders and would-be leaders will be expected to produce concrete plans to slash emissions in the dwindling time remaining. Targets are just weasel words, readily forgotten. We've been playing that game in Canada since the days of Jean Chretien.

Meanwhile, as our leaders fiddle the planet burns. The World Meteorological Organization has just released its State of the Global Climate 2020 report.  It makes for grim reading.

“All the key climate and impacts information in this report highlight relentless, continuing climate change, an increasing occurrence and intensification of extreme events, and severe losses and damage, affecting people, societies and economies,” said Petteri Taalas, the WMO secretary general.

Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading in the UK, said: “What is notable is an emerging picture that climate change is gathering pace: [ice is] melting more quickly and heat is accumulating more rapidly in the ocean, while CO2 increases, which are driving these changes, are becoming progressively larger over time.”

Prof Chris Rapley, at University College London, UK, said: “The 1.5C Paris guard-rail is close to being breached. The way we are running human affairs is destabilising the climate system, with predictable and increasingly dire consequences. It’s time for an uprising of concerted action to fix politics – managing the climate crisis will follow.”

2020 was a year of climate records shattered, the most recent of a succession of record-setting years. For our federal and provincial governments this is water off a duck's back. We can't get Ottawa to cut subsidies to the fossil energy sector much less deal with the tar pits of Athabasca.

Comments

  1. TrailblazerApril 20, 2021 at 5:12 PM

    Justin will cast bait as in freshwater fishing.
    He is incapable of deep sea fishing or thinking.
    Justin is a career politician by gift of his father Pierre.
    He has little else to offer.
    In short , he is in deep above his head.

    Like them or not , is adversaries represent something , Justin puts in appearances now and again just to remain within the public's eye.
    He is but a poor imitation of most USA politicians!

    FWIW
    The proposed super league of soccer is about to be shut down.
    It proposed a football version of american politics!
    Is it not time we demand the same from our politicians?

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibApril 21, 2021 at 9:41 AM

      The other day I looked at the current crop and their predecessors. Did David Lewis and Ed Broadbent really beget Jagmeet Singh? John Diefenbaker and Robert Stanfield, Scheer and O'Toole? Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, Iggy and Justin? Across the board I see a sharp decline in the calibre of leadership and just as we're embarked upon uncharted waters with dangerous shoals.

      Delete

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