Still Ignoring climate facts

One of the hardest thing to do in life is to break ranks with a peer group.

Only courageous people will take that pivotal step that makes people look and pay attention. 

In the recent Canadian election, the choice for political parties was in my opinion poor. As a conservative voting business person and Christian, I could not find entirely what I was looking for in either Andrew Scheer’s leadership or the Conservative Party platform.

My wife read the documents of each party, including Green. She said nobody seems to have laid out a clear and structured approach to tackling what militaries around the world are calling the greatest threat to the world today — climate change.

We do, of course, have two choices:

• Keep our heads in the sand or read more
• Get outside more, travel more and keep a journal.

It is very difficult to argue with the mountain of facts that are piling up weekly and pointing to the fact that we are having a negative impact on the planets climate. 

The polarity in the debate is alarming and speaks usually to economic cogs being worked behind the scene. What we need is leadership in the debate that is factual and non polarized.

We need political parties to identify clearly what they will do to mitigate the future challenges we are creating and we need to take a pragmatic approach to solving the problem. 

Of course, it would be ridiculous to continue to shut down the Oil Patch as is the current focus. All we do is stifle the investment in to clean technology that is desperately needed.

We can, however, make the industries more accountable for the damage they cause. 

Generations of business leaders in and out of the oil and gas sector have been comfortable making the decision to simply - pour the bad stuff down the drain, or into the river, or leave it in the lake or simply ignore it.

Enough is enough. If you travel, you see the results of that irresponsible decision making that is creating massive economic and social challenges for future generations. 

As a CEO, it is our role to hire where we see weakness, build a plan that has a predictable outcome and commit to a plan with a sustainable funding model.

Seems pretty simple when you write it down. So who is going to break ranks first?

Where is the conservative plan to tackle climate change? Where is the Christian plan to tackle climate change?

As environmental leaders, where is the Green Party’s plan for climate change?

I am confused that I cannot easily find a solution from our leaders and I firmly believe that the current government is incapable of taking any sustainable steps when you see the state of our budget which, frankly is a bigger concern for our future generation.

They will have no money to continue to tackle a anything let alone climate change. 

Business leaders, political leaders, student leaders, academic leaders and the scientific community need to start talking to establish what we can agree on.

Forget the Paris Climate Accord and all the other BS meetings that do nothing but elicit more fake promises and burn a mountain of fossil fuels to get people there and back.

An organic solution that we can all buy in to that starts with an agreement that we believe we understand the problem enough will move us down a positive path. Stop the polarizing BS and be willing to break ranks to at least discuss the topic. 

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.