“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Are you one of those skeptical of climate change? You’re not alone. Millions think the same.

US President Donald Trump is one of them, calling climate change a “con job” and a “myth” created by the Chinese to hurt American manufacturing. Trump, in fact, is skipping the climate change session at the G7 Summit in Quebec in order to rush off to Singapore for his historic meeting with North Korean President Kim Jong Un next week.

Perhaps the mercurial US President wouldn’t have been in such a hurry if he had been in attendance at a meeting in Calgary last week in which the president of Canada’s largest oil company spoke. Suncor CEO Steve Williams said he was unhappy with the debate on climate change and lamented that it has become so polarizing.

“It is a matter of profound disappointment to me that science and economics have taken on some strange political ownership. Why the science of the left-wing is different than the science of the right-wing,” he commented to a panel entitled, “Bridging Divides: In Search of Sound Public Policies for Energy and Environment in Canada.”

Yes, you read that right. This was the president of Canada’s largest oil company speaking and he had more to say according to a CBC story on the event.

“Climate change is science; hardcore science,” he said. “And I hope some of those politicians get brave enough to stand up and take some different positions on it,” adding he finds the current debate between climate change believers and deniers “scary.”

Too bad Trump wasn’t at the meeting. He totally rejects anything said on climate change by scientists and environmentalists, but he might listen to a businessman like himself. Then again, Trump doesn’t listen to much other than the sound of the keys as he pounds out his latest Twitter screed excoriating his critics and anyone with the temerity to disagree with him.

He certainly doesn’t listen to author Bill McKibben, who wrote the best-seller ‘The End of Nature’ and says Trump is costing the world the most valuable commodity of all in the seemingly endless climate change debate – time. “Climate change comes with a time limit,” he says. “We don’t have four years to waste ignoring it, not when Arctic sea ice is reaching new lows and temperatures are breaking records.”

Scientists and climatologists agree world-wide that if the mean temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere warms another two degrees F the planet will reach the tipping point to disaster. Heat trapping gases like carbon dioxide and methane are at their highest level in the last 650,000 years leading to the melting of the polar ice caps, rising ocean levels and weather extremes around the world, according to a recent National Geographic article. “What will we do to slow this warming? How will we cope with the changes we’ve already set into motion? While we struggle to figure it all out, the face of the Earth as we know it—coasts, forests, farms and snow-capped mountains—hangs in the balance,” the article said.

Momentous changes like this usually happen over “geologic time,” that is thousands and millions of years. Now they’re happening on a human time scale and can even be seen right here in the Kootenays with the dramatic melting of our glaciers, increasing wild fires and more numerous flooding events.

But will this stop us from driving our vehicles, mining our coal or clear-cutting our forests? Not likely, and in all honesty, not very practical either because we live here and in order for us to continue living in one of the more pristine areas of the world we have to continue doing the aforementioned at least to some degree.

But we could log and mine in more sustainable ways. We could switch from gas guzzling vehicles to electric and be less wasteful in the way we live. But in order for this to happen we have to end the polarized climate change debate and get on the same page.

Climate change is “hardcore science” and it’s endangering the entire planet. This is beyond “debate” and we’ve got to convince our politicians of this or get some new ones.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and believes it’s going to take more than a ban on plastic drinking straws to save the world.

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