Gambling our future over the climate crisis
2025-04-25T09:09:06Z
We need to realize that the chance of winning anything in the climate denial game with far-right-wing governments is vanishingly small.
Politicians today are gambling with the future of the global population. Science clearly describes the seriousness of our current climate crisis, but much of it is ignored in favour of advice from the fossil fuel industry and the Trump government. The main objective of Canada’s 2020 climate plan was to reduce carbon emissions, but it contradicts itself with continuing favour toward fossil fuels. Planned revisions by the new Liberal government may change this for the better, if they survive the upcoming election. However, the odds are against an effective climate change policy under a Conservative government, with many of their members being climate denialists. Pierre Poilievre has voted over 400 times against any actions that might help mitigate climate change. These included proposed measures to hold mining companies accountable for environmental damage and any actions that would have moved Canada closer to its climate targets while creating high-quality jobs in low-carbon industries nationwide. Electing Conservatives is a gamble with humanity’s future, with far bigger stakes than personal gambling. By contrast, the Liberal plan to attack climate change includes new incentives to decarbonize our energy sources. Being locked in a tariff battle with the US, Canada should also redirect fossil fuel subsidies toward industry development of renewable clean energy at small scales and support for EVs that would assist our auto industry, while also cooperating with provinces to build a much-needed west-east electricity grid.
Greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels are the cause of the increased frequency of severe storms, flooding, heat stroke, droughts, wildfires, water shortages and water-borne diseases. Moreover, poisonous air pollutants from the same fossil fuels cause increased cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and far more serious cardiovascular disease and asthma, especially among very young children and seniors. All Canadians are faced with more serious, complex health problems, a lot of personal suffering, increasing costs of healthcare, more limited opportunities, loss of productivity and an uncertain future. This also costs the economy many billions of dollars and is driving up insurance costs. Failure to recognize the disastrous climate changes occurring globally is a high-stakes gamble for everyone’s future, even the very survival of our species. Besides climate change, we are faced with a polycrisis — that is, multiple, interconnected crises that converge with and amplify each other. These include microplastics, biodiversity losses, land and resource use emergencies, not to mention the increasing instability of our essential democratic governance structures and processes upon which we’ve relied and benefited from for so long. These crises are costly, widely destructive and not easily corrected.
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