Floods and fires are the new normal

A heat wave thawed Siberia’s tundra and now, it’s on fire. By the end of August, the blazes had emitted a record 244 megatonnes of carbon dioxide — that’s 35% more than last year, which also set records. There are numerous wildfires above the arctic circle. This is creating a massive climate transformation and as the north melts, the Arctic saw an ice decline of 1.1 million square kilometers (425,000 square miles) this year.

The oceans are warming up and aquatic species are unable to adapt. There have been numerous instances of whales, dolphins and other animals beaching themselves. They are starving, weak and can’t breathe. The oceans are losing oxygen as more C02 is absorbed from human activity.

Birds and animals across the continents are disappearing. Diseases, hunger and poverty are taking their toll on the human population. Many are dying from extreme heatwaves as the earth’s temperature rises.

There have been riots and protests worldwide demanding accountability from the government for aiding the corporations who are stripping natural resources from the land and replacing it with toxic environments that are poisoning us. The governments do nothing. They help fund the destruction.

On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the United Nations General Assembly, saying the world is in a climate crisis. Sixty-four leaders from 5 continents signed a pledge they wouldn’t allow their governments to destroy the world. Meanwhile, back home, Environment and Climate Minister Jonathan Wilkinson vowed that a series of five-year emissions targets through 2050 will be his top legislative priority this fall, while Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan unveiled a $320-million cash infusion for the struggling fossil industry in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Part of the promise included terminating subsidies that encourage wilful destruction of our resources. Bailing out Husky’s White Rose project shouldn’t even be considered They’re already looking for more saying it isn’t nearly enough.

A New Canadian Climate Accountability Act

Ecojustice reported last June that “Canada has missed every GHG target it has ever set. In 1997’s Kyoto Accord, Canada promised to lower its emissions to 576 Mt by 2012. We missed that target by 25 per cent. In 2009, in Copenhagen, Canada committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 620 Mt by 2020. As it stands, we are set to miss this target by a wide margin. In Paris, Canada promised to reduce its emissions 30 per cent below its 2005 levels. We’re making some headway, but it doesn’t look great.”

A paper published by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration lists nine real ways the earth could end. Although the report was published seven years ago, a pandemic is the third possible way. It says, “New deadly pathogens crop up every year: Recent pandemics have included outbreaks of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), bird flu, and, most recently, a coronavirus called MERS that originated in Saudi Arabia. And because of our highly interconnected, global economy, a deadly disease could spread like wildfire.

“The threat of a global pandemic is very real,” said Joseph Miller, co-author (along with Ken Miller) of the textbook “Biology” (Prentice Hall, 2010).

Some reasons seem a bit unlikely but a couple of them sound very likely. Very likely because governments claim we’re in the midst of a climate crisis but are doing practically nothing about it, other than spewing tired rhetoric that’s been preached to the masses the last ten years.

The government has access to a lot of information published by think tanks, like A New Canadian Climate Accountability Act which has been written by CANRac, Ecojustice, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, Pembina Institute and West Coast Environmental Law. We need our elected leaders to listen to the experts. Besides this collaboration being presented freely, each one of these groups have written numerous reports about their findings and how they see various scenarios playing out. Some, like the Pembina Institute, do specific research available for a fee. No doubt the fee would be considerably less expensive than fossil fuel subsidies.

Who does the federal government listen to?

All the provinces want a larger healthcare transfer. In Alberta, the government gave the province’s health care money to foreign-owned mega billionaires that own the oil and gas companies. In fact, he had to kick 46,000 off healthcare in order to do this. He drastically reduced funding for universities and schools, teacher aids, and doctors’ salaries. The federal government would understand this. They, too, have been bailing out oil and gas companies with billions of dollars.

The government claims its plans for climate change may have to be put on hold. The pandemic is the immediate threat. There isn’t any doubt that some money intended for climate change has been diverted to oil & gas. A good example of this is the promise made to 7-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg in 2019, that Canada would plant two billion trees in the next 10 years. None have been planted so far.

The speech from the throne on September 23, 2020, made some large promises. What the heck! Promises are easy enough to make.

Okay… back to the flooding and burning…