What Conservatives should be yelling about climate change

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Dec 20

Economics columnist Heather Scofield wonders if yelling counts as the Conservative Party response to greenhouse gases.  Apparently, yelling at the radio hasn’t produced a response so far; but there’s always hope, so let’s take it from the top.

Let’s start with the basic question: why should Canada do anything at all, or much more than we already are?  Canada produces 1.5 percent of the world’s CO2 emission.  If Ontario were obliterated, destroyed, and returned to primordial forest, that would reduce Canada’s output by a third, saving the world 0.5 percent of its total emissions.  That amount, 0.5 percent, is the difference between 408 ppm and 406 ppm.

Explain the climate-shattering difference between 408 and 406 ppm.  Until that question is answered satisfactorily, there can be no discussion of what to do.

What Canada can practically do is much short of obliterating Ontario, and we’re reduced fighting over small fractions of a ppm of greenhouse gases that Canada can do anything about.  Yelling and screaming moralistically about the end of life on earth isn’t going to change the fact that Canada is too small a contributor to be any kind of factor in the climate matter.

At this point, discussions of economic costs and trade-offs should be applied to this question, because why should we do anything at all is more fundamental than and prior to the question of what should we do about it.  Why should we harm ourselves economically at all, needs to be answered seriously first, and not glossed over.

Though often asked, that this hasn’t been addressed is itself telling..

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