Richard Zurawski

Monday Sept 8, 2008

In just a bit more than a month we are going to the polls for federal and a municipal elections. And with the Nova Scotia provincial government at minority status it could be three in a hurry.

What better time to begin to process of forcing all three levels of government to take the environment seriously. Because the truth of the matter is that none of them get it where the climate is concerned and until forced won’t even consider the issue. In spite of the fact that it is now 99% certain that people and their industrial output into the atmosphere is shifting the climate at an alarming rate that is even worse than the IPCC has forecast. And considering it’s report is only a year old, that is a huge inditement of the folly of the current governments. All three levels of government are in the politics as usual stage and consider the economy, the budget, tax cuts and health care to the issues. Well folks, its time to knock some governmental heads and begin to get our priorities back on track. There will be no economy, tax cuts et al if we don’t do something soon to change the way we do things!

The first thing we have to do is stop the politics of the environment and get the Greens into the debates. The claptrap and positioning of the Conservatives and the NDP to exclude Elizabeth May from the debates should meet with a resounding call in and email campaign to all the participating media from us. If the Greens are not included its not a debate and we are tuning you out. Neither the media or the politicians care what is right or whether it is right for us. It is all about them and their chances of pulling the wool over our eyes so that we don’t get the true picture. If we let them do that then we only have ourselves to blame.

The solution is to immediately tax carbon dioxide output. We must shut it down. Then that money has to go right back into the development of a numerous alternatives to fossil fuels from reducing to sequestering to designing of new systems, ways of thought, actions and planning. The environmental problem is too serious to be left to the politicos and the posturing that stalls action and literally sucks the life out of us all.

Choose your government wisely folks. This may be our last, last chance to put in effect a solution that will rescue our planet for our children and our children’s children. The economy, health care and our society’s infrastructure are all dependent on how we vote, the governments we put in power and empower. Put back what we have had in the past couple of years and get set for more studies, obfuscation, confusion and outright lies.

Already the Arctic has seen changes that stagger the imagination. Temperatures, sea levels, CO2 levels and political rhetoric are all threatening to push us past the tipping point and once that happens, if it hasn’t already, we are going to rue the day we put our blinders on and whistled past the graveyard.