A global problem

While there is little doubt that the Harper government has made itself a major player on Steve’s precious world stage when it comes to stalling talks on coping with the negative effects of climate change, it is not alone in trivializing if not outright mocking global warming and its effects.
Are the CONs truly so stupid, so atavistic as to believe the planet isn’t warming?  This may be the case for a few perhaps such as Day and Gooyear, CON icons of god before science, but some conservatives need no convincing.

Harper’s interest in the Arctic tells us of a far worse political reality than simple ignorance.  The government is fully aware that global warming is altering our environment at an alarming rate, but they deal with the situation with the typical sociopathological approach of governments more concerned about money and garnering votes than with what is good for the majority of the citizens they were elected to represent.

In a report released Tuesday, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center described the opening of the Northwest Passage through Canada's Arctic islands and the "unusually fast" melting of ice in the Beaufort Sea as highlights of another extensive circumpolar thaw that has all northern nations -including Canada -scrambling to cope with increased Arctic ship traffic and to plan for potential oil and gas development.

Canada and the four other Arctic Ocean coastal nations -Russia, the U.S., Denmark and Norway -have pledged to co-operate in creating new search-and-rescue and environmental-protection regimes to manage increased shipping, tourism and economic development in the melting Arctic.

There is full acknowledgment by government of the ice melt, with little doubt they expect more to come, and quickly.  Plans are being made at a frantic pace.  Big bucks are being invested.  But for development. 

Sociopaths consider and act on all things with one perspective in mind: How they will be affected, leading to two considerations: what’s in it for them, and how can it harm them.

Thomas Walkom exposes some of this approach in a Star column today on the Harper’s government’s action on the economy.

Some explain this disjunction by arguing that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is ideologically blinkered. But that isn’t the whole explanation. There are other forces at work...they also fear doing anything that might interfere with the normal boom and bust of free-market capitalism.  More to the point, they fear alienating core voters.

In fact, for many who support right-wing parties, moderately high unemployment is useful...
Best of all it keeps the population in line. Most are too busy worrying about their jobs to pay attention to matters like climate change or the Alberta oilsands.

Warming and resulting effects are real and we must take advantage of them.  Warming is bull-shit, the climate isn’t changing, and look!...the Economy!!!!

Until climate change hits Canadians as personally as tax hikes, job cuts, and climbing costs of living, not enough of us will put pressure on our politicians - of any party  - to deal with negative climate change issues.  Without the pressure from voters, it is unlikely that any party will take on the warming challenges in anything more than a token way.  It just has too many down-sides politically.

That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t keep demanding change.  When the majority of Canadians finally are forced by circumstances to treat warming as something worth casting a vote over, a relevant dialogue will already be well established from which a larger population can build on.