LETTER

The LEAP Manifesto and climate change

 

It is ironic that Steve d’Eca uses the term “real world” in his condemnation of the Leap Manifesto. Whatever world it is that he and other global warming-deniers inhabit, it is certainly not the real one. Unlike the fantasy-based world of traditional economics where the planet is both an endlessly divisible pie and a bottomless toilet, global warming is a science-based reality that only those who are still religiously devoted to Big Oil are trying to deny.

To do so, they invent stories that can only be described as bad fiction. For instance, they claim that environmental protections are a “socialist” plot, which is odd considering that socialist regimes  like China and the former USSR have been even harder on the environment that capitalist regimes. In the real world, democratic countries like Germany, Norway and Sweden are already demonstrating that switching to renewables is not only possible but profitable.  

Deniers also accuse environmentalists of being scaremongers when they are the ones who scream that the economic sky is going to be in “tatters” every time there is a hint of environmental regulation. Considering that the tar sands account for less than 2% of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product, that is some fairy tale.

However, as severed from reality as the deniers are, at least they are consistent. The hypocrites in the Notley and Trudeau governments would have us believe the poorly written fantasy that, while global warming is real, we can solve it by expanding our participation in the same unsustainable, fossil-fuelled orgy that created it in the first place. In essence, they are promoting the belief that we can put out the fire by using more gasoline. Even a child should be able to point out the holes in that narrative.

David Desjardins
Aylmer