The evidence for global climate change is everywhere. There is not a reputable scientific organization on the planet that disputes it. Climate change is real, and human beings are the cause of it.
And climate change, if we don’t do something about it, will lead to disastrous consequences. It may be the greatest crisis ever faced by humanity. It may – and unfortunately, this is not overstating it – lead to the downfall of our entire civilization. And our children and grandchildren have a real chance of witnessing that downfall, unless the people in our generation act now and act decisively.
So why is so little being done about it, especially in Canada and the USA? And why do so few Canadians and Americans seem to care that nothing is being done about it? Why are we threatening to vote for the very politicians least likely to act? For McCain. For Harper. How could we be so stupid?
‘Cause the world ain’t simple, Sam.
You sometimes wish the world was simple, that everything marched in step, that global warming could be proved by temperatures gradually rising year by year. Unfortunately, temperatures rise decade by decade, and year by year they go up and down.
You wish the phenomenon was uniform and showed the same results everywhere. But global climate change shows up in different places in different ways, more rain here, less rain there, more ice melting here, more ice building up here…. That is because the landscape is complex and no simple statement can describe it all.
Then, of course, there are the special interest groups who have a stake in muddying the discussion. The planet be hanged, I want profits now. The planet be hanged, I want cheap gas. The planet be hanged, I hate the carbon tax. While Stephen Harper plays chicken with the fate of the planet, Canadians threaten to flock to the polls to vote for him.
Harper is a great friend and follower of George “Dubya” Bush, and has followed him lockstep in every policy decision the US president has made in regard to global climate change. Bush, as everybody knows, comes from Texas. Texas as a state has the largest carbon footprint in the country. It is larger than California, which has the largest population. It is larger than the second and third largest polluting states combined, California and Pennsylvania. In fact, you can combine number two and number three and number fifty – Vermont – together, and Texas still has the larger carbon footprint. Texas is the worst polluter in the USA, and the USA is the worst polluter on the planet.
Everybody knows that money gets politicians elected, and Texas money got George Bush elected governor of Texas prior to him becoming America’s C.E.O. So Bush owes a lot to Texas money, and Texas money is filthy with carbon, a lot of it. And Stephen Harper is and was a George Bush lapdog, so that Texas money befouls him too.
And Canadians are voting for Stephen Harper because, we think, he’s such a great leader. May our grandchildren forgive us.
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Want to see Texas’s carbon footprint? Try
http://www.eredux.com/states/index.php?sortBy=carbon_total_int&sortOrder=DESC&rows=228
Or read
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/22687258/
Father Theo's Blog 
Posted on September 15, 2008
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