To call Rex Murphy's opinion on climate change "logic" is a bit of a stretch.
Murphy says:
And where is the plain sense in proclaiming a global problem and designing a solution that exempts two of the largest contributors to that problem from the scheme to correct it?
What doesn't make sense is to let the planet be destroyed rather than doing everything we can to slow down and eventually stop the destructive process.
What doesn't make sense is to demand that the world's poorest countries - where many of the people don't have electricity or sufficient food or clean water - move first to solve a problem that the developed countries created.
Canada is one of the most wasteful countries in the world. We're blessed with an abundance of resources that we waste with no thought for the future or even for what's happening right now.
Canada is also blessed with a well-educated and technologically-advanced population - that means we have the resources to contribute toward solving the problem.
We can develop methodologies and technologies to mitigate and slow down climate change, then we can share them with the developing world to help them slow down their emissions. We can sell our technologies to other developed countries and make "megatonnes of money" as Dion says. If we don't, we'll not only be left with a severely degraded environment, we'll harm our economy because other developed countries will take advantage of the huge opportunities available in developing and selling green technologies.
What people like Murphy don't seem to be able to get through their heads is that this isn't just some cute little political football we're talking about. This is our entire world. This is everything. Destroy it and we have no place left to live.
It's not only unethical and immoral to do nothing, it's astoundingly stupid.
4 comments:
If you feel that strongly about it you are completely free to donate your own time and money to the cause. The fact of the mater is though that if Canada were to sign on to this while the US and China are clearly not the consequences would be economic suicide. Ontario's manufacturers already suffering under a strong dollar would move to the unregulated jurisdictions and we would loose the jobs. The CO2 would still be produced and we would have nothing to show for our sacrifices. If this argument seems familiar it is the same argument that was made against the free trade agreement. That industry would move to the low cost unregulated producer. For the US this has certainly been the case as they have lost most of their manufacturing sector.
Thanks again for your comment Kevin.
Here's my response -
Action on climate change - short term pain to avoid long-term devastation.
Rex Murphy falls for Harper's "one size fits all" approach that conveniently ignores per capita carbon emissions. It's the White Boys' way. Man per man we put out ten or twenty times more GHG than they do but that's irrelevant in Murphy's logic. There are ways to accommodate both sides in this problem but Harper's and Murphy's "our way or the highway" tantrum will only guarantee no progress. The industrialized world has to lead, that means we have to do most. That doesn't mean that we don't expect India and China to do their bit. We do and they understand that. Murphy and Harper want to preserve the inherently-racist, white man's advantage ratio by across-the-board emission cuts. I doubt that Murphy would ever want to be associated with anything racist but the policy he endorses is just that. He hasn't thought it through.
Très bien exprimé, Mound of Sound. Merci de nous visiter.
-fv
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