Letter to the people of Alberta who will be going to the polls to determine the future of this province at a very critical time.
In 1917, Senator Hiram Johnson wrote, “The first casualty when war comes, is truth.” I believe this also applies to our elections. The rhetoric, the spin, the partisanship that is evident in the discussion around this election have little to do with the truth, or any meaningful consideration or debate of the policies that are key to our survival and quality of life moving forward.
There are real consequences when you ignore the truth, because regardless of your partisanship beliefs, facts are facts and as they say, “the truth will out.” If you repeat the same mantra enough times, some seem to believe it, although there is obvious information from credible sources that it is not true, and this is what I do not understand about this election and the conservative position on climate change, and the carbon tax that has been put in place to help us prevent a future for our children and grandchildren that is full of peril and economic disasters.
Six months ago, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that climate change is much more frightening and moving forward at a pace far quicker than they had thought, it is the result of the carbon emissions from human activity, and we have 10 to 12 years to take immediate and acute action. We find from a Canadian report this week that the impacts in Canada are even more severe. The impact in Canada is worse in the Prairies, the North and Northern British Columbia. Canadian insurance agencies have said that three of the last five major climate events in Canada have been in Alberta, two massive fires, the flood and we have had massive fires in BC for the last two summers. These events have cost billions of dollars, destroyed lives and economies and it is said it is only the beginning. US Intelligence has said that climate change represents one of the biggest threats to security in a multitude of ways:
“Extreme weather events in a warmer world have the potential for greater impacts and can compound with other drivers to raise the risk of humanitarian disasters, conflict, water and food shortages, population migration, labour shortfalls, price shocks, and power outages,” he said.
Bill Nordhaus who has shared the Nobel Peace prize in 2018 on his work on climate change and economics states: “… that raising prices through, say, a carbon tax, is a far more effective and efficient way to lower carbon emissions than direct government controls on the quantity of emissions through, say, regulatory limits on cars and power plants. Higher prices will encourage firms and consumers to find alternatives to carbon-based products as well as encourage new technologies that will make those substitutes competitive. This has become the mainstream view among economists.”
Why in the face of this evidence do we have a person wanting to lead this province and our families in a way that will lead to such destruction, and pretend that we have the option of waiting? Why are people believing this?
Jobs? There are far more jobs being created in Canada and the US, blue collar jobs in solar and wind
energies.
Our pipelines – the person wanting to lead us is talking about fighting the federal government who has exactly the same goal to get the TransCanada pipeline built, why would you not be talking about working together to address the legitimate concerns of BC and Indigenous people who have gone through legal channels to have their concerns addressed? What is fighting going to accomplish?
We must at this time look to the facts, because regardless of political rhetoric and misrepresentations, we will deal with the consequences of our actions and when our children ask us, “Why did you not do anything to stop this,” we will not to be able to say we didn’t know, because each one of us does know the truth. The question is do we have the integrity to act?
Shannon Bailey
