http://www.rtcc.org/policy/science-must-guide-climate-change-debate-elizabeth-may/

 

Canada's leading politicians are 'feigning outrage' while doing nothing to cut the country's carbon emissions, according to Green Party chief Elizabeth May.

 

The last week saw a series of major discussions in Ottawa over the government's climate change policies. One proposal is a cap-and-trade system (effectively a carbon market), but many conservatives believe this is little more than a 'carbon tax'.

Writing on the ipolitics website, May says the two leading parties are more concerned about point scoring and shouting down opponents than having a reasoned debate:

We should be talking about the science. We should, as Parliamentarians, regardless of party, be acting responsibly as the evidence piles up. Every day it seems there is new evidence, always more worrying. Climate change is no longer creeping slowly. It is galloping, spurred on by dangerous feed-back loops.

The Arctic ice is shrinking in ways that spell danger for all of us, permafrost is melting threatening the release of vast deposits of methane (a very powerful greenhouse gas), oceans are acidifying, food production is threatened, and around the world lives are lost in extreme events from floods to fires to mudslides to tropical storms and tornadoes.

We should be talking about how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible in hope of avoiding ever-more-likely runaway global warming. I don't like thinking about - or worse, talking about, the worst case scenarios of global warming. But former French President Sarkozy was right: the survival of human civilization is at risk.