I appreciate that he’s written this in our local paper, and that he’s paying attention to it as a local reporter, and I agree: it’s 40 years past time, and while I won’t go into this in great detail here, it’s important to understand that climate change denial was not a significant issue in the early 1990s when the world first tried to organize against the threat it caused.
Denial was manufactured by fossil fuel companies and industry groups spreading disinformation.
Which gets me to the reason I’m writing this letter: Steven closed his piece by calling on us to recognize that climate change “isn’t political.”
He’s right that the facts aren’t political: the Earth is warming. Humans are causing it by burning fossil fuels. That warming is threatening our continued ability to thrive on this planet.
But with a federal election campaign underway, I implore everyone to recognize that how we deal with climate change is entirely political, and our lives, our children’s lives, and the future of civilization as we know it depend on how our political leaders respond to this crisis — and how we force them to respond.
The Liberal Party practices a dangerous tactic I like to call maplewashing: Justin Trudeau’s government, in which our MP Patrick Weiler is complicit, speaks about climate change as though Canada is a leader while simultaneously overseeing a dramatic expansion in fossil fuel production. His government bought a pipeline that
the company didn’t want to build, all for the purpose of growing tar sands oil production (one of the world’s most destructive and carbon intensive oil sources) over the coming decades.
We cannot continue along this path.
That’s why I support Avi Lewis, our federal NDP candidate. If you’re not familiar with his work, I’d encourage you to Google him; among other things, he’s worked with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez on Green New Deal activism and has an entire career’s worth of credibility as the staunchest advocate for climate justice and the type of transformational change that the IPCC called for in 2018.
Vote like your lives depend on it.
They do.
Nick Gottlieb
Squamish
