Skip to main content
letters
Open this photo in gallery:

Wildfires are becoming more common, and extending over a longer season.JUAN MEDINA/Reuters

Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

..................................................................................................................................

We all know the list. More frequent and longer killer heat waves like the one in Europe right now, earlier and longer wildfire seasons in Western Canada and the U.S., protracted flooding over larger areas and more often …

Summertime, any time really, and with climate change, the livin’ ain’t easy for anyone with a conscience. Yet when it comes to actually making the necessary lifestyle sacrifices to limit carbon use, parking that conscience seems to be very easy indeed.

Where’s our Green Revolution to remake society? Where’s our Green New Deal? Its goals are beyond “worth considering” (Green New Deal’s Urgency And Ambition – editorial, June 24).

They are imperative.

Pauline Walker, Winnipeg

.................................

It is clear to me that we are undergoing serious climate change. However, anyone who believes that lowering our carbon emissions to the levels of the Paris accord will halt future earthquakes, tsunamis, desertification, pandemics and even war, will be very, very disappointed.

Our efforts would be better spent in learning how to adapt to this new reality, such as building dikes, hurricane-proof buildings, sophisticated back-up power systems, more vigilant health care, advanced methods of agriculture, and getting used to living on less.

Canada is fortunate: We have advanced technological capabilities and a stable political system (so far). Alas, I fear that the countries lacking these luxuries are going to bear the brunt of what is coming, unless we become more humane and less selfish.

Frank Foulkes, Toronto

.................................

Gary Mason has reached new levels of hyperbole with his column on the Conservative climate plan: “stomach-churning,” “eye-rolling derision,” “meaningless drivel,” “sham of a document” (The Conservative Climate Plan Is A Sad Joke – June 26).

Perhaps “pragmatic” would have been a better adjective. You could wipe Canada off the map, and China and India would replace our contribution to greenhouse emissions within weeks.

In that context, anything Canada can do to contribute to global efforts to reduce emissions makes a lot more sense than severely damaging our economy with purely symbolic anti-pipeline initiatives.

Pipelines simply allow responsible Canadian suppliers to meet global demand for fossil fuels, a demand which will continue to increase for years yet. If Canadian suppliers don’t meet it, irresponsible suppliers will, and our economy will continue to be hamstrung.

If the Liberals really believe their hypocritical “climate emergency” thesis, why did they cap their ineffective carbon tax far below what their own advisers say is required to have any theoretical impact? As it stands, it’s useless.

Perhaps it’s because the thinking (and voting) public does not buy the story that climate change is “the greatest threat the world has faced since the rise of nazism,” to use Mr. Mason’s words. In poll after poll, climate concerns rank behind the economy, health care and international tensions which threaten our peace and prosperity.

Ron Munkley, Toronto

.................................

Andrew Scheer’s “climate plan” in no way matches what we know to be happening to the planet. It does not respond to the science which shows an accelerating rise in PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is, as Gary Mason recently argued, a “joke.” If we love our children, we need to vote for candidates this fall who recognize this emergency for what it is, who have a plan to act. Right now.

Lyn Adamson, Toronto

.................................

I am so tired of hearing people point out that any reduction in Canada’s emissions would quickly be overwhelmed by new coal plants in China. While mathematically true, this observation is ethically irrelevant. The nature of a collective-action problem is that no one country can solve it alone. Columnists in China, the U.S. and India could just as easily throw up their hands and plead powerlessness, urging their governments to free-ride on the efforts of others.

The real solution is to defy the cannibalistic logic of climate defeatism. Medium-sized countries like Canada have a role to play, especially given our high per capita emissions. We may not save the world on our own, but we can do our part. We can do what is right simply because it is right.

David Taub Bancroft, Vancouver

.................................

I wish the media would stop feeding, and lending de-facto legitimacy to, the Conservative propaganda machine that continues to call the Liberal effort a “carbon tax.” What the Liberal government has put in place is an avoidable regulatory charge which is almost completely refundable: A tax goes only one way unless you have overpaid to begin with.

So while “regulatory charge” does not have the sex appeal of “carbon tax” (and the Conservatives know it), it more accurately describes what is actually in place. As Orwell showed, language can be a powerful tool for deception.

E.L. Springolo, Aurora, Ont.

.................................

There is a reason we’re spinning our wheels on climate change: We refuse to have the necessary conversations about technical solutions. Triple-pane windows, high-efficiency compressors, electrified rail, biofuels, insulation, etc. are all boring topics. Until you realize the massive potential they offer to give us exactly what we want. Debating the public acceptance of carbon pricing is a third-order derivative of tangible action – and has gotten us nowhere.

Pete Reinecke, Ottawa

.................................

Saying that we shouldn’t have a carbon tax because it can’t do the job on its own is like saying I shouldn’t use a hammer to build my new deck because I will also need a saw. Saying the carbon tax would have to be much bigger to do the job is like saying I won’t need a saw to build my deck if I have a big enough hammer.

We need every available tool to reduce carbon emissions: technology, incentives, regulations, education, moral suasion, and yes, carbon taxes, which according to economists and the Parliamentary Budget Office, can do some of the work very efficiently, as a lever for all the other tools.

Chris Stoate, Oakville, Ont.

.................................

We’re staring climate change – or a climate emergency, as some call it – in the face, yet we still can’t agree or act on a global basis. We need a serious wake-up call that the world as a whole would have no choice but to heed – something along the lines of what happened in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

There won’t be an opportunity to create future generations, let alone save them, unless we stop considering and act.

Marianne Orr, Brampton, Ont.

.................................

In the past, national emergencies have warranted national unity governments, dedicated to overcoming the existential threat. Maybe what we need is for the government to propose such a thing for this fall’s election.

Parties that really believe in the emergency should support such a proposal and figure out a way to share power for the common good. I suspect the Conservatives would object, but it would virtually assure a government actually committed to meaningful action – but then maybe that’s not what the Liberals really want.

Paul Brinkhurst, Okotoks, Alta.

..................................................................................................................................

Keep your Opinions sharp and informed. Get the Opinion newsletter. Sign up today.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe