Provincial and federal politicians talk about Canada being carbon neutral at some distant time, but continue using direct and indirect subsidies to promote higher production of fossil fuels. They pretend that this country’s oil, gas, and coal may impact global climate if consumed here, but will not if burned elsewhere.

Areas burned by wildfires in British Columbia have been steadily increasing, and with months remaining in fire season, this year’s destruction by fire is already more than double the average of the ten preceding years.

Turns out that people are like governments that are willing to moderate climate risks, but only if actions are not painful. Seems that cartoonist Walt Kelly was correct when he wrote for Earth Day 1970, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

If we choose to enrich our lives in the present at the cost of the quality of life of future generations, that is a choice of values that we rarely like to make explicitly. We have to be willing to look in the mirror and say that we are willing to live our lives selfishly, without regard to the lives of our children and grandchildren. And if we are not willing to own that selfish value, then we have to make a change in our behavior today.

A disaster strikes. The news reaches every home for a few days, perhaps a week. A debate erupts over whether climate change is to blame. Victims are profiled. There’s a tally of lives lost and property destroyed, and then the disaster is forgotten… But the story is quite different for those of us who are directly affected. We won’t just move on. Instead, we’ll likely be caught in what we might call a disaster’s long tail, a slow-moving series of effects both immaterial and material.

Instead of moving away from climate damaging energy sources, both Liberal and NDP governments of British Columbia have accelerated fossil fuel production through direct and indirect subsidies paid for with carbon taxes.

We have zero years before climate and ecological breakdown, because it’s already here. We have zero years left to procrastinate. The longer we wait to act, the worse the floods, fires, droughts, famines and heatwaves will get.

“There is a genuine possibility that within the coming century, we will hit temperatures that are deeply incompatible with the continued existence of human life.”

Canadian industrialists, the Trudeau government, and western provinces collectively respond to the warnings of climate scientists, “Forget about it. We’re not limiting fossil fuel production. We’re doing the opposite.”

Following are excerpts from The Symbolic and Substantive Politics of Climate Change, an article by Dr. Steven Cohen, Senior Vice Dean of Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies.

In Bill Henderson’s guest post, he drew attention to a commentary by University of New Brunswick’s Jason MacLean. Published in April 2022, Dr. MacLean’s article should be reviewed. Excerpts follow…

Denial is fast becoming an addict’s tantrum, and nobody can be quite as clueless and ignorant about existential climate dangers like those in the oil patch and the journalists, think tanks, academics, and politicians who profit by assisting climate change denial.