Climate change demands leadership
The following article by Linda Duncan, the federal New Democratic Party candidate in Edmonton Strathcona, is the third in an occasional series on environmental policy that will appear in these pages in coming weeks as the federal election campaign progresses.
The first, focusing on the Liberals’ “Green Shift” plan and written by Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell, appeared on Aug. 27 and the second, focusing on the Tories’ environmental policy and written by Edmonton-Leduc Conservative MP James Rajotte, appeared on Aug. 30. Both articles can be found under Online Extras at edmontonjournal.com.
Linda Duncan Hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast and people wonder if this is the year we see a second city sink. Scientists report two more massive breaks in the Arctic ice shelf.
These signals from nature remind us again that climate change is likely the most significant environmental threat of our time.
From the secretary general of the UN, to Leonardo Dicaprio and Sir Nicholas Stern, it has been made clear that the cost of inaction on climate change far exceeds the cost of action. We need an effort of the scale of the Manhattan project to avert this crisis — an effort as grand as the effort to put the first man on the moon — and we need a party that is willing and able to give it to us.
So far all we have seen are meagre policies that barely approach the action necessary to avert the climate crisis. We need a comprehensive plan for Canada that puts in place both short-term actions to reduce emissions and sets in motion long-term transformative changes to bring us a more sustainable future. But we must act now.
Canadians do not want to wreak havoc on the planet. We want to give generations to come the right to enjoy a livable environment and a healthy economy. To meet that goal we must invest in green technologies and green jobs.
A climate crisis or a crisis of leadership? The science of climate change is clear.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change advises that the evidence of a warming climate system is unequivocal. Climate change is happening because of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. These emissions build up in the atmosphere, cause global temperatures to rise and in turn cause sea levels to rise. We are already witnessing increased droughts, heat waves, a dramatic breakup of Arctic sea ice and increasingly intense tropical storms.
The effects of today’s emissions are expected to be felt by us for many years to come.
To prevent the most severe future temperature rises, our political representatives must be willing to take real action to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the short and the long terms. We cannot afford to wait another decade. We must choose political leaders who are willing to take on this challenge and act, instead of rewarding those who have failed us in the past.
The cost of previous governments’ apathy already guarantees that global temperatures will rise. What we do now will determine the severity of that warming. Depending on the scenario, and the level of future action, global average temperatures could increase anywhere from 1.6 degrees to 6.9 degrees above temperatures at the time of the Industrial Revolution.
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