Tough medicine needed to save the world

Extreme weather brings home climate change reality.

The bills for climate change are coming due and the situation is alarming.

My part of Canada is experiencing the worst drought in memory. The eastern US has been buffeted by catastrophic storms and heat waves. Tornadoes have become common where they were formerly unknown (in fact one hit my home as I was finishing this piece!). Meanwhile, many parts of British Columbia are fighting floods and mudslides and the Arctic continues to thaw.

Climate change is no longer theory. It's a lethal reality that is already killing people, flora and fauna — through crop failures, weather catastrophes and the elimination of habitat needed to support life on land, in the air and in water.

Especially in the Global South, poor countries have been painfully aware of climate change for years. Now the drastic changes in weather patterns are hitting us in the rich world too, and we're just beginning to see the suffering we face, in terms of fatal storms, wildfires, farm and crop failures and water shortages.

If we don't act, we need to think of the great excuses we can offer to our dying kids and grandchildren:

• "We knew we were in mortal danger due to climate change, but we didn't want to change our lifestyles."
• "We could have taken the lead on climate change in the rich countries but it might have given poor ones an advantage over us, after several centuries of colonial exploitation, and we couldn't stand for that."
• "We didn't have the money because we were fighting a deficit and wouldn't raise corporate taxes."
• "We fired scientists because we elected governments that sided with big oil companies and declared environmental science to be the enemy."

Your dying grand-kids will really be impressed.

It's no wonder Canadians have turned away from Harper's Conservatives. A recent national poll put the NDP at 32 percent, with much credit due to Leader Tom Mulcair, with his tough-talking, polluter-pay message. The Greens are at a lofty 10 percent of popular support.

Since forming a majority, Stephen Harper has blatantly put corporate interests over environmental protection, which evidently doesn't go over with Canadians. No Canadian federal government has ever fallen so far, so fast, after winning a majority. Public concern rises every time Enbridge has to spin away the effects of the latest pipeline leak.

Tough medicine is required to fight the climate change crisis, which coincides with the unfolding world financial crisis. Harperites cite a "deficit bomb" — caused directly by exporting good jobs and cutting corporate taxes — to justify drastic cuts to public services just at a time when public services are needed most.

We are putting people, especially young trained ones, out in the cold, at a time when we should be harnessing every available brain and body to put renewable energy systems in place, build public transportation, feed the hungry and house the homeless.

The time for tinkering is past. Citizens must demand their governments declare climate change a top priority and address it with all the creativity and capital they would throw into military war.

Yes, retooling the economy to fight climate change will cost money, but, as in war, the tough medicine needed will have enormous benefits in terms of job creation. And once the transition has been made to energy efficiency, we'll be amazed we got along without the changes public investment made possible.

Instead of putting beans in their ears and firing experts — as Canada's current government is doing — political leaders need to work with the best minds and most experienced partners to develop and deliver action plans to reverse this threat to our children's future.

Canada, to our shame, led the charge in scuttling the Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse gas production. Stephen Harper saw Kyoto as a "socialist plot" intended to transfer wealth to poor countries. He has consistently rejected any sort of global agreements in which wealthy countries give up more than poor ones.

Harper and his ilk continually dish out their kind of tough medicine in the form of austerity budgets, public service cuts, forced privatization and corporate tax breaks. It's time Canadians demanded the kind of tough medicine we need if we're going to be able to look our grandchildren in the eye and say, "We saved your world."

© Copyright 2012 Ish Theilheimer, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca