It's Worse Than We Imagine.

 


The Canadian west is struggling with a record-setting heatwave. It's beset by drought. The vast pine forests have been turned into resinous tinder in recent years by pine beetle infestations, another consequence of global warming. Our national miners' canary, Lytton, broke the national heat record three times in three days. On the fourth day Lytton was turned to cinders.

Then on, of all places, a San Francisco news service, SFGate, I learn that, in the previous 15 hours, western Canada was hit by more than 710-thousand lightning strikes.

According to SFGate there's even a name for it - "Pyrocumulonimbus British Columbia."

Record heatwaves, severe drought, the devastation of vast pine forests, and a wave of climate-fueled lightning strikes. In British Columbia, 49 new wildfires in 48 hours. Today the tally has doubled to more than 100 wildfires across B.C.  Bad as that is, it's much worse that we have a national government - of sorts - that is so obsessed with bitumen pipelines that we in the west are its "collateral damage." That's more than an insult. That's an outrage. We're paying the price for the Liberal government's fossil fuel fetish. 

Enough!

The country is in peril in a variety of ways that can vary from region to region. Our government has proclaimed a climate emergency but words without deeds will not keep our people from dying, our forests from being swept by wildfires. This government talks endlessly but refuses to invoke the powers of the Emergencies Act, presumably because that would expose the rank hypocrisy of their energy policy.

Canada deserves better than this. Canadians deserve better than this. For six long years our prime minister has shown he's not up to the job of safeguarding our country and our people.  The preamble to the Emergencies Act is explicit: the safety and security of the individual, the protection of the values of the body politic and the preservation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the state are fundamental obligations of government.


And, no, I don't think the Conservatives would do better but that's not the point. The survival of this country is not a toss up, a question of the lesser of two weasels. These two parties have exercised a shared monopoly on power in Canada going back to Confederation. They have shared the government of our country for every year of the past 40 years and have done Sweet Fanny Adams to arrest global warming. 




Comments

  1. Marie SnyderJuly 2, 2021 at 4:28 AM

    And even worse, Trudeau ran on a platform of helping the environment and Indigenous rights, then rammed pipelines through unceded territory.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibJuly 2, 2021 at 7:55 AM

      The Liberals have long been accused of campaigning from the Left and then governing from the Right. The Trans-Mountain pipeline is convincing proof.

      Delete
  2. lungtaJuly 2, 2021 at 2:04 PM

    if res schools teach nothing else
    "For one hundred and fifty plus long years our prime ministers have shown they are not up to the job of safeguarding our country and our people."... there fixed

    the "people"
    and the environment
    are an after thought regardless of political color
    under current governing systems

    ReplyDelete

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