The climate on campus

Engage in a discussion with university students or peruse the social media pages they stare at on their devices, and it quickly becomes evident that climate change is the political issue youth are most passionate about. University campuses are home to a sizable contingent of climate justice activists, who proclaim loudly that climate catastrophe is imminent unless we cripple the fossil fuel industry and end capitalism.

Much of the climate fanaticism is sponsored by the students’ unions. There are campaigns to ban the sale and distribution of plastic water bottles on at least two dozen campuses in Canada. The plastic bottle ban is supported by the Canadian Federation of Students ( CFS), which claims that “communities, not corporations, must control water resources and services.” Evidently, the exchange of money for water is so offensive to their socialist sensitivities that it must be purged from campuses. Surely it won’t be long before students’ unions are setting up “safe spaces” students can retreat to when they feel “triggered” by the sight of plastic bottles.

In addition to the bottle ban, there is a strong and growing movement on cam- puses — also organized in part by the CFS — lobbying for universities to divest from fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry “is a rogue industry and it’s immoral for our colleges to continue investing in it,” claims the CFS. According to them, fossil fuel companies are “spending millions of dollars to corrupt our political process,” they are “profiting while our children and communities pay the price” and “their greed for profit threatens the entire planet.” All that’s left is for the CFS to launch a campaign to have the scien- tist- muzzling, climate- denying oil puppet Stephen Harper deported for setting Canada on the path to Armageddon.

Fortunately, these radicals make up only a minority of university students. But even if we look past the climate activists and consider the broad population of young Canadians, there is an almost universal approval for any project, initiative, or government action that claims to improve the environment. Any- thing “environmental” is altruistic, and if it promotes “sustainability” it is a selfless act for the greater good. Why bother considering economic cost or inconveniences imposed on society? We all have to make sacrifices for the good of Mother Earth, after all, so what’s green is good.

This kind of thinking is far too common among university students. Even the business departments, where one might expect to find some resistance to the climate zealotry, are beginning to succumb to the warmists (though many would argue, given the Calgary Chamber’s praise of Rachel Notley’s “climate leadership” that the business community has already capitulated).

What is evident is that universities ( and the public school system, from which I suspect very few students have managed to graduate in recent years without having to sit through An Inconvenient Truth) are conditioning a generation of thinkers to believe that the future of human welfare depends not on entrepreneurship and innovation; but on government regulation, redistribution, and living poorer lives. My generation suffers not from a climate crisis, but an ideological one.

Climate fanaticism is sponsored by the students’ unions