Letter to Wellington Advertiser Editor re ‘MP Michael Chong reviews 2012’
Dear Editor:
Just a friendly suggestion to our hard-working Member of Parliament from Wellington-Halton Hills: Hey there, Mr. Michael Chong, it’s time to get out of your office and step into the real world of climate change.
In your recent review of 2012 in the Advertiser, you painted a rosy picture of recent government steps to tackle climate change, a subject that you not-so-long-ago characterized as the greatest threat facing humanity. By presenting a few isolated and inflated federal ‘achievements’ on greenhouse gas reductions and industrial regulations, however, you are playing a very treacherous game with us – fostering a sense of complacency about climate issues when we can least afford to be complacent.
As journalist Jeffrey Simpson recently wrote: “Canada leads the world in presenting plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and Canada leads the world in the size of the gap between plans and deeds.”
In the real world of climate change, record high temperatures, wildfires, droughts and extreme storms have become increasingly commonplace around the world. Beyond the respected corps of climate scientists that Canada has either muzzled or fired under Mr. Harper’s leadership, even business groups such as the World Bank and Price Waterhouse have issued dire warnings these past few months. Their climate reports don’t pussyfoot around, predicting warming of up to 6º Celsius by 2100 if we carry on with business as usual.
If 6ºC doesn’t sound like much (especially to Canadians who aren’t crazy about winter), rest assured that this is Hell on Earth. It turns our beautiful blue planet into a deadly sphere where – according to predictions by National Geographic – 95 per cent of all living species will be wiped out, where soil erosion will remove most of Earth’s plant cover, and deserts will cover central Europe and reach up towards the Arctic Circle. Unthinkable, but unless we act now, inevitable.
Let’s get serious!
Liz Armstrong
Liz Armstrong