Worthington, that old, white, failed conservative candidate must have simply decided when he graduated from Carleton U. in the fifties that there simply was nothing more to learn. Any new research, any recent world events, any post-50s facts are just...fads. Or the lies of communists.
How else can one explain his response to Elizabeth May objecting to the fact that the 2012 federal budget doesn’t even mention climate change:
(emphasis mine)
One might ask why on earth the budget would mention climate change? There is nothing you, I, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair, or even Elizabeth May herself can do about climate change. Climate change is going to happen, we just don’t know to what extent.
And why is it such a threat to our future? We will adapt to it, whatever it is, and even if no one fully understands it, we still have to live with it. Climate is always changing. Thank goodness we no longer stress “global warming,” and now call it “climate change.” (WTF?)
If Canada were to abandon the Keystone pipeline, ceased trying to extract oil from the earth, eliminated oil tankers, forbade SUVs, outlawed cigarettes and allowed only whole wheat bread, it wouldn’t stop the climate from changing if the climate continued to want to change.
Peter...where to start...
The climate doesn’t want to change. It doesn’t not want to change. It simply changes as a result of forces around it, and one of those forces is the impact of human beings spewing crap into a closed system – the Earth system.
“Climate change is going to happen, we just don’t know to what extent... We will adapt to it, whatever it is...” Well, no. That’s the fallacy of the ignorant who mock science yet blindly believe “they” – those scientists – will come up with a solution. If we keep warming the planet at the rate we are, there will come a point at which the devastations caused by the warming will occur so rapidly and with such frequency and ferocity that we will not have the time or resources to “adapt” our entire species to the new and unstable environment.
Worthington goes on to say that because the climate is changing anyway (because it wants to), that we should focus on what’s really important - “tap the continent’s oil reserves...exploit our resources. Period.”
If a fire is threatening to spread, a few people trying to control it will have no success if others are avidly feeding it as fast as they can. The fire will reach a point where it will destroy even those feeding it. It doesn’t want to. It can’t help it though, because that’s the science at work.
“Thank goodness we no longer stress “global warming,” and now call it “climate change.”” First, WTF gives him relief in that? Next - Worthington is a journalist? He doesn’t know that those terms mean two different things?
"Without the national round table, they can go wherever they like for advice, and sometimes that may mean they go after the people who are going to give them the answer they expect to get," said John Stone, a former Environment Canada employee who has worked with the agency. "I can imagine very easily that the vacuum will be filled with organizations and interests which are more inclined to deny climate change, sow doubt about climate change and hence, hold back progress," said Mr. Stone, who is currently an adjunct professor with Carleton University's geography and environmental studies department.
“Hold back progress...” There’s the problem. To the harpers and worthingtons of this world, progress is only linked to economic development, and protecting our planet and life on it just doesn’t turn a quick enough buck. What they fail to realize in their monumental ignorance, what even a young child can understand is that you can’t make money if you use up the means to make it, and you sure as hell can’t spend it if you’re dead.
