Flirting with collective suicide

Last November, UN Secretary General António Guterres made the following observations about our global climate emergency:

■ We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing.

■ We are on the highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.

■ We have a choice: co-operate or perish. It is either a collective solidarity pact or a collective suicide pact.

These warnings are stark and uncompromising. They are repeated by the IPCC, the World Meteorological Association and other science-based and well-credentialled organizations. The frequency, intensity and duration of global extreme weather events continues to increase. Time is running out for us to keep global warming within the critical 1.5 C limit.

So, why do we continue to accept token gestures, broken promises and vacuous rhetoric?

Why are we seemingly reliant on the silent hope that “someone else” and/or some new wonder technology will save the day? Why are we allowing ourselves to get closer and closer to a climate Armageddon?

Several players are complicit in this dangerous path we are taking:

■ Among other things, the federal Liberals continue to heavily subsidize the fossil fuel industry.

■ Since 1990, every country in the G7 has decreased its greenhouse gas emissions … except Canada, which has increased by 21 per cent. In contrast, the U.K. has reduced its emissions 42 per cent.

■ By promising to cancel the carbon tax if they become the government, the federal Conservatives prey on the voter’s dislike of taxes and create doubt about the effectiveness of this measure even though the vast majority of economists say that it is very effective. This is an unconscionable disservice to Canadians.

■ Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives persist in their plans to build more fossil gas power plants. This will significantly increase our greenhouse gas emissions even though there are more environmentally friendly and less expensive alternatives.

■ Canada’s fossil fuel industry is making windfall profits and continuing to heavily lobby the federal government to continue our deadly addiction. Six fossil fuel companies have formed the Pathways Alliance to promote the very costly and decidedly unproven technology of carbon capture, while our window for meaningful action increasingly shrinks. The obvious alternative stares us in the face: STOP burning fossil fuels; turn to renewable energy.

■ Canadian banks (led by RBC) are also blinded by quarterly profits as they continue to financially support planet-destroying fossil fuel projects.

■ Enbridge doggedly continues to promote the dangerous myth of “natural” gas. While it has a lower carbon footprint, it remains a fossil fuel that we can no longer afford to poison our atmosphere with. I am amazed at how Enbridge has somehow worked its way into becoming an integral part of the federal government’s Greener Homes Grant. I am equally taken aback by Enbridge being the lead sponsor of the Nature Inspiration Awards at our national Museum of Nature. Finally, I am appalled that McMaster University has bought into this sham of natural gas.

■ Our media are far too timid about making the link between increased extreme weather events and climate change. A recent article in the New York Times is titled “Alberta Is on Fire, But Climate Change Is an Election Taboo.”

So, with all of this going on, we feel overwhelmed. Fear and uncertainty over what individuals can do mean that we largely tend to ignore this enormous elephant in the room. Many of us also mindlessly enjoy a highly destructive consumer lifestyle. The stakes are now life or death. It is time for us to stop, speak up and protest … vigorously and massively.