I have friends who are climate scientists, and man, the amount of data they cannot yet publish because it isn’t complete or fully analyzed is crazy.
And that data pretty much points in one and only one direction: humanity is fked. Like, either stone-age fked, or full-blown extinction f**ked.
We are accelerating past 1.5℃ of warming. That goal is in our rear view mirrors already. 2℃ of warming is similarly inevitable. We are now looking - at the most conservative - at least 5℃ of warming.
So what does +5℃ of warming look like? Chaotic weather, which largely prevents any significant amount of industrial agriculture. And no, backyard gardens cannot pick up the slack, otherwise agriculture at scale would have never replaced it. Droughts that massively impact the 82% of agriculture that is rainfall/watershed dependent. Lethally high wet bulb temperatures that essentially make large parts of the planet uninhabitable for multi-week to multi-month portions of the year. And no - AC cannot help there. Beyond about 50℃, any consumer/commercial level AC becomes increasingly inefficient and unable to keep buildings cool. And only first-world countries have that infrastructure - it is largely absent from the 4.2 Billion people who live between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
We are going to see the migration of Billions as they move to still-habitable regions of the planet. Can Canada take in 500 Million new residents inside of a decade, while still maintaining its infrastructure like housing and food distribution and sanitary systems? Because that’s what is going to happen by the 2050s - hundreds of millions eyeing Canada as a climate refuge, even from places like the southern U.S… How will we protect our own citizens from our infrastructure getting overwhelmed and collapsing? Eventually, something will shatter - either that infrastructure will collapse, bringing a nation-wide famine to our country, or we hold that famine off by putting our own citizens first, and deny entry to others via bullets and extermination pogroms.
When you combine ethnography and economics with climate science, things get truly terrifying. Our civilization depends on a fragile web of trade. Just look at what happened when a virtually-insignificant virus with a piddly 2-3% fatality rate (with modern medical support, 12-18% without) hit us back in 2020. Entire supply lines were disrupted almost to the point of collapse, and we are still feeling major effects three years later. Almost nothing you use or consume is produced entirely within 1,000km of you, which means when trade collapses, the food supply will also vanish almost entirely. That tin of peaches in your pantry has a supply route that likely involves 8 different processing points across 6 different countries, and all the elements of that can of peaches travels an aggregate average of 15,000km to reach your table. And almost 100% of the food you eat has a similar profile.
Now think what will happen when something truly disruptive, such as multiple climate disruptions hitting multiple sectors of our production and trade systems, happens at the same time. Things will collapse when people become desperate enough to tear apart the existing infrastructure in a bid to survive another day.
I have seen some very realistic (to the point of being almost ridiculously conservative) projections that see humanity’s population contracting by 40% before 2050, and 80-95% by 2070. And this was based on a 4℃ change in climate. We are currently pointing at 5+℃ of change.
There is no chance of anything approximating a high-tech civilization surviving a plunge of this magnitude. We have been leveraging technology to massively exceed the planet’s carrying capacity since the 1920s, and thanks to climate change, that bill is finally coming due.
And because we have effectively exhausted all surface deposits of natural resources - those that can be accessed and processed without modern tech, at least - humanity will become permanently stuck in a low-tech, possibly even stone-age form on a planet that is uninhabitable (cannot live year-round in most places) outside of the polar regions, and therefore can only support a few million of us at the most.
FYI: the federal public service employees are being forced to go to the office 2-3days or more. Most have no operational need to go to the office. Meetings the office are still done via MsTeams!
Summers with choking smog from forest fires, mass migrations as entire communities get relocated from fires / floods / extreme heat, abandoned remote communities that can no longer sustain themselves due to climatic changes, farmers with ruined crops from climate changes, economy in threat as all these changes accumulate … otherwise we’ll just sit around debating all this until its too late.
People say that “one person going vegan, not flying or not having kids won’t solve anything” but if one is not willing to do the fucking bare minimum, how the fuck are we ever going to fix this shit? Corporations don’t just pollute and despoil for the hell of it, we literally PAY THEM TO DO IT as consumers. It’s such a fucking cop-out to say that change has to come from the top. We drive EVERYTHING.
but expecting people - not just many people, but a lot, an enormous number, at least a majority if not an overwhelming majorly - to spontaneous commit to a coordinated action despite widely differing philosophies, politics and life circumstances, is like expecting dissolved sugar to spontaneously re-crystallise back into a cube at the bottom of your cup.
plausible paths to change require organisation, and there are not very many examples of successful organisation that aren't led from the top.
You could make the argument that if those votes bought and won an election and you got a non conservative government, you would end up with more climate friendly legislation than without those exemptions (and then conservatives win and nothing climate friendly happens.)
Such is the curse of a large pluralistic democracy where we have to win over folks who disagree with us.
At this point it would take some very drastic measures. Because we didn’t ease into lowering carbon emissions and oil production, now we have to do it in a way that could heavily disrupt everything.
We literally need to cut oil production to a bare minimum at this point. We need to build a mass transit system across Canada to connect all municipalities and allow people to move and work in other cities instead of cramming everyone in Toronto and Vancouver. Cities also need to change how areas are zoned to allow for neighborhoods where people and the services they need can all be accessed on foot in ~15min. Also build better cycling infrastructure. And plant trees! Trees, trees and more trees. Especially in cities. Make them more green and increase shade, reduce the heat
15 minute cities are a step towards the NWO, didn’t you hear? Their plans are falling into place…
/s
But seriously though - there are a lot of idiots who think this will result in people not being allowed to leave their neighborhoods, and they are very upset by the thought.
With the Liberals being the status quo. NDP would actually move the government left (out of centre, but not by much). Greens need to be able to have a consistent message across their party to be taken seriously. Something they lacked in the last election.
The whole “let’s vote with the Cons to take the carbon tax off all home heating” is a big red flag.
The Liberals fucked up with their exemption. And the NDP leadership seemed to think doubling down on the fuckup was reasonable.
The right approach would be doubling down on incentives to get people off heating oil (as the Liberal proposal does), rather than undermining climate policy.
Ehhhhhh, poll numbers as bad as they are, I’ll take whatever compromise helps keep the Cons out of power.
The way I see hit, small concession -> better chance at another Lib/NDP government to enact more climate change policy. As the alternative is watching the Cons burn the planet to the ground, I’ll take that compromise. I don’t love it but I also don’t love the fact so many people are ready to vote Con. Sadly, I don’t get to choose the world I’m in, just how I react to it.
My understanding is that the exemption is for homes heated with oil. The 13% to which you are referring includes ALL buildings and ALL heating methods (gas, electric and oil.)
So that concession is much smaller.
And of course, even if the concession were for the entire 13% who do you think will cut emissions more next government, a Liberal/NDP coalition (or either on their own) or the Conservatives?
The 13% is for heating homes through any means. The current exemption is for oil (8% of homes). The exemption that the conservativesproposed and NDP supported is for all heating. I’m not quite sure how commercial and industrial buildings are effected by this so that’s a good point., and of course our electricity isn’t 100% green yet.
At least as far as I can tell, the 13% is for all buildings, not just residential. From the article:
Buildings make up another major source of emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from buildings accounted for 13 per cent of Canada’s total emissions in 2021
But the larger point is that even if this exemption were for the entire 13%, as recent polling has the Conservatives winning a majority I’d say any of that exemption is worth keeping the Conservatives out of power, if only so the climate has a fighting chance. That exemption would hurt a lot the environment a lot less than the “drill baby drill” motto of the Conservative party.
Umm have you followed the Canadian Green party in recent years? I don’t think I’d trust them to organize a bake sale, let alone a federal government. Just being ideologically correct sure ain’t enough to be government.
The fact that they are anti-nuclear, when safe nuclear reactors that produce almost no radioactive waste exist, make the Greens a complete non-starter for me.
Solar and wind are great, but they still don’t hold a candle to nuclear’s reliability and consistency of power output.
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