Answer to the front lines of climate change

Vincent J. Curtis

29 June 23

RE: An urgent message from the climate change front lines. Op-ed by Alyssa-Mae Laviolette and Alienor Rougeot both of Environmental Defence.  The Hamilton Spectator 29 June 23.

We received a message allegedly from the front line of climate change that was written by people nowhere near it.  Allegedly, the locals of Fort Chipewyan have never seen anything like this forest fire that threatened the area before, but somehow know that fireweed is what first grows “after the land burns.”

Climate change is supposed to be a global phenomenon, but it having a front line means that it’s local, and local disasters are happening somewhere all the time.

And we’re assured that “the intensity and scale of this wildfire season is due to the climate change caused by the production and consumption of fossil fuels.”  Now that the fires are out, does that mean that climate has changed again or that the season is over?  On the theory that CO2 causes climate change, the production of fossil fuels doesn’t contribute to climate change, only its consumption that does.

We have here another example of white people speaking on behalf of the voiceless Indian and Metis, and I didn’t read a single reference to the Fort Mac fire of 2016, when a major municipality of non-indigenous was severely damaged by a forest fire.

The problem with English lit majors writing on science-cum-social-justice is that they come across as uninformed busybodies to those who are paying attention.

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