No Matter Where You Turn, You Run Face First Into Walls. What Would a Progressive Do?

 

Maybe you doubt that Canada is in the throes of a climate emergency. Then you're an idiot.

Maybe you cling to blind hope that "they'll think of something." Then you're an idiot.

Maybe you figure if you were just more careful with your recycling a lot of this would go away. Yep, you're an idiot.

Maybe you want to believe that Mr. Trudeau will sort it all out and keep us snug and safe. Definitely an idiot.

Maybe you just don't want to think about it. Then you're a coward.

If one or more of these exist in your life, don't even call yourself progressive. Cowardice is not progressive. Idiocy is not progressive.

The CBC has a story this morning about how the Fraser Valley flooding is a warning to us all. A warning? What about all the warnings we've had and ignored for the past two, three decades? Didn't Canada get the memo that climate breakdown would bring severe storm events of increasing frequency, intensity and duration? Why were we left out?  Weren't we told to expect extreme heat waves? Haven't we noticed our steadily worsening wildfires, year by year by year; or our receding glaciers; or our disappearing Arctic sea ice; or that damn "Blob" thing a couple of hundred miles off our coast out in the Pacific; or the droughts that now plague grain farmers and ranchers on the prairies; or the infestation of pine beetles wiping out vast swathes of our once verdant forests? What did we think that was all about?

What is this, Rip Van Winkle for the 21st century?

Yes, we need a major overhaul of our essential infrastructure. When, in just one day, all four of your highways and both of your major railways go down, you got a problem, an infrastructure problem, and you've been ignoring it for years, decades.

Yes, we have fallen victim to feeble infrastructure but the real culprit has been decades of neglect and dereliction by our political caste, Conservative, Liberal and New Dem alike. They've been kicking this can down the road, one after the other. They have chosen not to protect us, to leave us vulnerable to that day when nature would come calling. 

They've done a fine job protecting, even nurturing, our fossil fuel companies, just not us. The thousands of orphaned oil wells across the West that now become the public's problem testify to the outright betrayal by those we foolishly elected to high office. Ditto for those massive tailing ponds in the Athabasca Tar Sands. Wait till we get the bill for that - unless storms like those that just hit the Fraser Valley get to those lethal ponds first. 

Now we have to deal with the consequences of their neglect, getting caught unprepared by climate breakdown. But, if we're to have a chance, we have to get ourselves out from under the rot that we keep electing to rule us. They're working for somebody but it ain't you.