SARM resolution an embarrassment

A quote often attributed to Mark Twain says: “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they've been fooled.” The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities should be embarrassed that a resolution about carbon dioxide passed with 95 per cent support at their recent convention.

The resolution labels any polices that target CO2 as “illogical and dangerous” and suggests Saskatchewan leave any agreements that reference “net zero.” The situation is clear. Dangerous climate change is caused by extraction, processing and burning of fossil fuels: gas, oil and coal.

Farmers know the weather controls our productive capacity. Climate change is the biggest risk we face. Dry-land farmers without access to irrigation depend on timely rain, no hailstorms, no extreme heat waves, no prairie fires and no strong winds to lodge crops or blow away windrows at harvest.

More extreme weather brought on by burning fossil fuels impacts our food supply and farm livelihoods.

SARM'S unwillingness to align with the world to achieve net zero emissions is sad, as is their arrogance to think we will “just adapt” by building more irrigation. We are playing with fire by relentlessly burning more fossil fuels. It's overconfident to presume we can just adapt.

We need net zero soon, or we will cross global climate tipping points. Until we achieve net zero, we are accelerating away from the stable climate that humanity has enjoyed since the last ice age. We are driving toward a cliff, so we must stop rather than accelerate (by burning more fossil fuels).

The SARM resolution demonstrates a madness that needs to be addressed with principled leadership and education. But, as the quote attributed to Mark Twain says, convincing those folks that they have been fooled will be difficult.

Glenn Wright, Vanscoy