Defeat Climate Ignorance

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

It’s never good when people who don’t understand or care about science, let alone basic human decency, gain positions of power, but it’s especially bad when humanity is facing an existential crisis. Our solvable but still ongoing destruction of the natural world and its systems and hence, ourselves, is not only putting our survival at risk; it’s consigning even more human beings to misery.

Politicians who truly understood the climate and biodiversity crises would be doing everything possible to correct course, to ramp up solutions such as renewable energy and storage, better power grids, protection and restoration of lands and waters and a shift away from wasteful consumer capitalism.

It’s stunning that the leader of what is considered the most powerful nation on Earth doesn’t just reject the mountains of research that have gone into our current understanding of climate systems and change, he just doesn’t care. Instead, it’s “Drill, baby, drill.” Such a profound level of ignorance is hard to fathom.

But many people listen to him and his cronies. The wealthy among them probably think their billions will save them from the fate most of the world’s population faces: increasing temperatures, deadly heat waves, floods, droughts, water shortages, agricultural failures, catastrophic storms, wider disease spread and more.

The worst part is that there’s no real benefit to continuing along the same path. It’s just lazy. It’s a way for the currently privileged to maintain their wealth and benefits, and to transfer more from the economically disadvantaged and middle classes to themselves — for a short time until everything really starts to fall apart.

Even under the current capitalist system, addressing climate change and rapid species extinction is economically beneficial, especially if reducing wealth inequality is part of the solution. A rational and just shift to cleaner energy and better economic systems could create excellent jobs, cleaner air, water and land, reduced health care costs, greater agricultural and food security, less reliance on volatile markets and rapacious corporations and so much more.

Life would be much improved even for those who live in what amount to “petrostates,” including Alberta, where abundant wind and solar resources were sparking a renewable energy boom before the oil-and-gas-only government slammed on the brakes.

I’m bewildered by politicians who deny or downplay the climate emergency to fervently push coal, gas and oil. Do they really believe what they’re saying? Do they not understand or have an awareness of the mountains of scientific evidence, as well as real-life events, that show this planet is heating at alarming rates as emissions increase? That we could be headed into a future that is barely if at all survivable? Or do they just not care? Is it about the money?

Neither ignorance nor avarice is much of an excuse.

It would be terrible if Canada’s more oil-oriented politicians were to lead us down the same stupid path the U.S. is following — where outright climate science denial is facilitating a regressive future of ramped-up fossil fuel production, more pollution, lower health and safety standards and a climate system exceeding dangerous, life-threatening tipping points.

Let’s not allow fools and sociopaths to determine our future. They’re already causing untold anguish for no reason except profit. It’s time to take back our power and show politicians that they work for us. It’s time to embrace progress and a better future for all.

We need to speak up and step up.

By David Suzuki, with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor and Writer Ian Hanington