Keeping it real
Vincent J. Curtis
22 Sept 22
RE: Climate change a top tier concern for foreign leaders. A CP story by James McCarten. Published in the Hamilton Spectator 22 Sept 22.
If you want to know why Pierre Poilievre is going to win the next election, you only have to read this headline. Earlier this week, the global average temperature anomaly was 0.1℃ above the 1979-2000 average. This is the global warming that is supposed run out of control by 2030 and destroy the planet by 2099. Meanwhile, Canada’s inflation rate is running at about 8 percent.
Climate change has the advantage of being invisible and remote. We can’t see the climate changing and its alleged disastrous effects are in the remote future. Talking about climate change among world leaders a lot easier than dealing with prosaic things at home, like inflation, deficits, supply disruptions, and prospective food shortages - things that are all too real.
Changes in the price of bread and gasoline are visible and immediate. People feel the effects of high inflation immediately. They can be inconvenienced by shortages, and these are the issues that Poilievre keeps talking about.
It may be plodding to talk about the price
of bread as compared to saving the planet, but at the next election people will
have a choice between saving civilization in 2099 or stopping the rise in the
cost of bread and gasoline right now. A
lot of people who are really suffering in the here and now are going to choose
dealing with the here and now over the invisible, the remote, and, let’s face
it, the ridiculous.
-30-
Excellent commentary. Every ten years or so someone comes out with a prediction of the end of the world for some reason or another. Today, I was listening to the Dennis Prager show on US radio and he had a guest of wrote a book about a prediction made by Paul Ehrlich about the shortage of raw materials in the 1980s would not be able to sustain the world’s population. An economist made a bet with him that his prediction would be wrong. The economist won $567 on the original bet of $1,000 being the value in $1,000 in the year the bet was made.
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