A deep affordability crisis plus relentless misinformation from the fossil industry are driving climate change lower on the public opinion radar. Where are the new strategies to push back better?
There is a cultural divide between climate change believers and deniers that has changed and broadened over the years, no doubt due to a large extent to the slick marketing practices of resource extractive industries ... but there's more to it than that. I lived in Victoria for 5 years and experienced it first-hand when trying to defend old growth forest. But it wasn't just the industry itself, never mind the brutal practices of the RCMP C-IRG unit, but some individuals employed in logging would take it upon themselves to threaten old growth forest defenders directly.
Many people working for the fossil industry believe their livelihoods are threatened by climate change policies. They don't believe the hype of clean alternate employment and will do their best on an individual basis to maintain the jobs they have and resist change. Pickup truck sales have gone through the roof. Most everything about eastern Canada is greeted with vitriol. This holds particularly true for the federal government and Trudeau. Our $32B in tax dollars supporting the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion should have been used for fighting climate change rather than squandered it for so little in return.
No doubt I'm not alone when I say that I'm really not sure how or where to start a new conversation. It takes two to tango.
With the majority of Canadians placing living affordability and health issues above climate concerns, we have to change the discourse so people realize that both affordability and health issues are driven to a large extent by climate change. The following is a recent letter to the editor in the Peterborough Examiner newspaper.
GOING GREEN PREVENTS US FROM GOING MORE IN THE RED
Many people, including some elected officials, complain that we can’t afford climate change actions because the cost of living is already not affordable. What they ignore is that much of the increase in living costs is driven by the cost of climate change effects, and reducing climate change now is much cheaper than paying for future damages.
The Climate Institute, one of Canada’s primary research organizations on the effects of climate change, released a report “Damage Control” in 2022 showing a drop in annual income of $720 per person by 2025 because of climate effects. At the same time, household costs are rising because of climate change. Food prices are increasing due to floods and droughts, 0.5 to 1.8 percentage points annually within the decade. Home insurance costs rose about $80 per household last year alone, largely because of extreme weather damage.
Health and human costs are also rising because of fossil-fuel pollution, extreme heat and diseases such as lime disease migrating north as Canada warms. The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) says that about 34,000 Canadians die prematurely every year from breathing fossil-fuel exhaust, more than died in 2022 from COVID. Gas stoves cause 13% of childhood asthma.
It’s cheaper to act now. A Study by Queen’s University shows that, with no new international agreements to reduce carbon emissions, the physical cost alone by 2100 of climate damage would be twice as high as the cost of reducing emissions now to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees. We also must be doing more to adapt to the changes already occurring from climate change; every dollar invested in adaptation yields $13-$15 in benefits.
Affordability is clearly a serious issue, but common sense demands that we spend money now to keep living affordable. Nothing else makes economic sense.
There is a cultural divide between climate change believers and deniers that has changed and broadened over the years, no doubt due to a large extent to the slick marketing practices of resource extractive industries ... but there's more to it than that. I lived in Victoria for 5 years and experienced it first-hand when trying to defend old growth forest. But it wasn't just the industry itself, never mind the brutal practices of the RCMP C-IRG unit, but some individuals employed in logging would take it upon themselves to threaten old growth forest defenders directly.
Many people working for the fossil industry believe their livelihoods are threatened by climate change policies. They don't believe the hype of clean alternate employment and will do their best on an individual basis to maintain the jobs they have and resist change. Pickup truck sales have gone through the roof. Most everything about eastern Canada is greeted with vitriol. This holds particularly true for the federal government and Trudeau. Our $32B in tax dollars supporting the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion should have been used for fighting climate change rather than squandered it for so little in return.
No doubt I'm not alone when I say that I'm really not sure how or where to start a new conversation. It takes two to tango.
With the majority of Canadians placing living affordability and health issues above climate concerns, we have to change the discourse so people realize that both affordability and health issues are driven to a large extent by climate change. The following is a recent letter to the editor in the Peterborough Examiner newspaper.
GOING GREEN PREVENTS US FROM GOING MORE IN THE RED
Many people, including some elected officials, complain that we can’t afford climate change actions because the cost of living is already not affordable. What they ignore is that much of the increase in living costs is driven by the cost of climate change effects, and reducing climate change now is much cheaper than paying for future damages.
The Climate Institute, one of Canada’s primary research organizations on the effects of climate change, released a report “Damage Control” in 2022 showing a drop in annual income of $720 per person by 2025 because of climate effects. At the same time, household costs are rising because of climate change. Food prices are increasing due to floods and droughts, 0.5 to 1.8 percentage points annually within the decade. Home insurance costs rose about $80 per household last year alone, largely because of extreme weather damage.
Health and human costs are also rising because of fossil-fuel pollution, extreme heat and diseases such as lime disease migrating north as Canada warms. The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) says that about 34,000 Canadians die prematurely every year from breathing fossil-fuel exhaust, more than died in 2022 from COVID. Gas stoves cause 13% of childhood asthma.
It’s cheaper to act now. A Study by Queen’s University shows that, with no new international agreements to reduce carbon emissions, the physical cost alone by 2100 of climate damage would be twice as high as the cost of reducing emissions now to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees. We also must be doing more to adapt to the changes already occurring from climate change; every dollar invested in adaptation yields $13-$15 in benefits.
Affordability is clearly a serious issue, but common sense demands that we spend money now to keep living affordable. Nothing else makes economic sense.