Submitted by Linda Mathers
It is incomprehensible that the Conservative Party of Canada has denied the climate reality with one simple, downed motion. At their convention last week, a majority voted against a motion to declare Climate Change is real and needs action. How did this fact-denying voice raise its ugly head in a mainstream Canadian institution?
Globally there is a massive mobilization at all levels and in all sectors to finally face the urgency of the need for action. Public figures such as Bill Gates and Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, are urging us to choose a path to a renewable future. World leaders are identifying the climate crisis as the number one issue of our time. Financial institutions including Canada’s top five banks are being called out world-wide for their increasing investment in fossil fuels.
In our own communities throughout Muskoka, Parry Sound and Almaguin, we are seeing local organizations such as Climate Action Muskoka taking climate action. Organizations including the Muskoka Steamship and Discovery Centre, Retired Teachers of Ontario, and the Muskoka Conservancy are partnering with others in the community to amplify the need for collaboration on education and action. Local chambers of commerce are sketching out sustainability plans for businesses. Groups are working to protect local biodiversity and citizens are advocating to protect wetlands and trails.
The District of Muskoka has declared a Climate Emergency, developed a corporate climate action plan, and is reaching out to support lower tiers grappling with their path to real action. Municipalities are addressing flooding, extreme weather events and exploring ways to develop their own climate action plans to lead us to a resilient, sustainable low-carbon future. The Muskoka Watershed Council continues to provide leadership with a science-based plan for watershed management in a climate changing future.
We know widely and deeply that climate change is a reality and we must take action. The Conservative Party apparently does not.
There is only one way to take the Conservative party to task and that is at the ballot box. We need climate leadership which means a just, equitable, and green transition to our future. We know now with certainty where we will NOT get that leadership.
Linda Mathers is a retired educator, member of Climate Action Muskoka, and the volunteer coordinator with the Parry Sound Muskoka Green Party of Ontario.
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Ray Vowels says
One thing is for sure and that is the fact that the world is getting warmer. Another thing for sure is the fact that no matter what we do it’s not going to stop doing what it’s been doing for at the least 10 thousand years the very best we can hope for is we might slow it down but in the end nature will do whatever it likes. So in my opinion we had better just learn to adopt to things being warmer the weather being more unpredictable and learn to live with it. I’m not saying don’t do anything but taxing people into the poor house is not the way to go.
Frank Sterle Jr. says
it must still be convenient for the industry to have such a large portion of society too tired and worried about feeding, housing and guarding their families against COVID-19 while on a substandard income to criticize it for the global environmental damage it causes, particularly when not immediately observable.
(And who needs ‘carbon sinks’ when, as the subconscious general mentality allows us, Earth’s entire atmosphere and water systems can be and usually are used as our carbon dumps?!)
About two years ago, Canada’s supposedly environmentally conscious Liberal government gave the fossil fuel sector 12-fold the subsidization they allocated towards renewable energy innovation. This was beside agreeing to triple the diluted bitumen pipeline-flow westward through B.C.
Mass addiction to fossil-fuel-powered single occupant vehicles surely helps keep the average addict silent about the planet’s greatest and still very profitable polluter, lest they feel like and/or be publicly deemed hypocritical.
Robert Paul Attfield says
The stance of the Conservative Partyon this is beyond shocking.. The image that comes to mind is that of an ostrich with its head in the sand. Linda Mathers is correct. The ballot box is the place to ensure that this kind of thinking doesn’t become official policy for the party in power.
Allen Markle says
The puzzled look on Erin O’tooles’ faces is quite apropos I think. As if he is trying to rationalize that the people that have just denied his statement that climate change (warming and what it brings) is real, are members of his party. 54% of them must be from some other planet. I would suggest that most of the nay- sayers are westerners where speaking out against oil is undoubtedly treasonable. But oil is not the only culprit, just the easiest one to point to.
But how can anyone with a few years under his belt have not noticed the weather is changing. Global warming is inevitable, right up ‘ til when someone starts another glacier. Stand in the Bow or Old Man river and look up the mountain to where that cold water stream starts. The glaciers are melting.
We can’t stop the warming but we certainly are hastening it along and there is no government or populace that has yet come up with the method or desire to really do much about it.
To cite all the people who are telling us what should be done is one thing, but I doubt that any of them have given up their big vehicles (electrics and their batteries are just another problem) or their vacation flights or their second and third home.
Would pointing at one particular party as being ‘ incomprehensible’ suggest that everything is fine right now with the other. I sure don’t feel that way.
Dan West says
Its too bad people and representatives of people think they know better than the science. I find it impressive that some can invoke science to show that climate has changed before from thousands of years ago to millions but when the same science says that co2 is warming our world they can’t seem to wrap their minds around it. As the saying goes ” It’s hard to convince someone of a truth when their paycheck depends on not believing it” this minority seems to be made up of mostly older men who seem to be the most vocal with the most silly reasons for not doing anything. “We can’t control the weather”, “climate has always changed”, co2 is just a trace gas and too small a percentage to affect the climate” are a few of these excuses to do nothing.
Science has already ruled out these simple yet wrong statements long ago, the green house theory has been around 200 years and science has been moving forward since cataloging the greenhouse gasses and the effect they have on atmospheric chemistry. It’s backed up by physics, math, chemistry,quantum theory and other disciplines yet deniers parrot the garbage they find on the internet “echo chamber”.
Confirmation bias anyone ?Good thing science isn’t done this way we wouldn’t get very far with that attitude.
These people that parrot these so called objections need to be educated if possible or just dragged (kicking and screaming) into this new reality since the good of the many outweigh the objections of the few just like the drinking and driving laws or smoking in public, you don’t hear much objections to these laws regarding personal freedoms
So don’t vote for idiots, enact legislation and lets make a future for our children that they can be proud of or our generation will go down as the stupid one that put money ahead of sustainability