Dear Editor:
In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, it is time for us to reevaluate our head-in-the-sand position on global warming/climate change. As the seas and the planet in general get warmer, these storms are able to pick up a lot more energy and then they cause a lot more damage, as well as being more frequent.
All of this was predicted years ago by scientists. Of course, there are certain people who reject science, and who choose to live in a world where nothing is explainable, and everything happens by accident or magic.
There are also people who can enrich themselves by destroying the environment, regardless of the cost to the vast majority of the human race.
These two groups, who generally hold the reins of power, act entirely in their own interests, and they enact public policy to benefit themselves alone.
For the rest of us, who do not have the resources to just move elsewhere when the climate change-induced disasters wipe out our homes and livelihoods, we need to ensure that our societies and economic systems are set up to be sustainable, which is to say, they need to be in harmony with what the resources of this planet can handle.
In the matter of global warming-induced climate change, the deniers have followed the classical pattern of misinformation in order to manipulate public policy. First, they asserted that it wasn't happening.
However, the conditions have now progressed to the point that even the biggest ostrich can no longer pretend that it isn't happening. Second, they asserted that it wasn't human-caused, and they are still trying this.
However, all of the good analysis shows that it is in fact human-caused, although lay people actually do need to put in some mental effort to understand the analysis.
Third, they assert that it's too expensive to change our environmentally destructive practices. This is also untrue. The costs of inaction on climate change far outweigh the costs of setting up sustainable societies. However, the costs of inaction on climate change are paid by the 99 per cent, and the profits of inaction on climate change are collected by the one per cent, and of course the one per cent want us to believe that their profits are far more important than our costs.
Victor Finberg, Burnaby
