If we want to be serious about the climate crisis in this country, climate action can’t be solely a left-wing issue. Conservatives should care just as much as anyone else about climate change because when disasters happen, they affect us all—not just the people who care about preventing them the most.
The key words to focus on here are that they “should care just as much as” anyone else. As far as I can tell, Conservative voters in Canada do tend to acknowledge climate change as a man-made issue.
The stats show that about 70 per cent of Canadians acknowledge man-made climate change as an issue. Regardless of the fact that this means 30 per cent of Canadians still reject overwhelming scientific evidence that supports the existence of man-made climate change, that statistic is a good sign.
It means that the fight in Canada is not against climate change denial like it often is in the United States. Instead, the fight is against complacency.
We don’t necessarily need to convince the last 30 per cent to believe facts. We need the 70 per cent to take action based on those facts.
The vast majority of us know that the climate crisis is real. We know that we have played a significant role in the climate crisis. We know that something needs to be done about the climate crisis. Now, we just need to demand that all of our politicians—not just the lefties—take it seriously and do something about it. Piece of cake, right?
So, how do we get the climate crisis higher up on Canadian voters’ priority lists so that we’re all demanding action?
Well, we need to connect the climate crisis to the values that we hold dearest. For instance, do you care about security? As temperatures rise and parts of the world become inhospitable, economic opportunity and prosperity will decrease, while crime and conflict will increase.
Do you care about economic inequality? According to the IPCC report from last Fall, disadvantaged and vulnerable populations will be the worst affected by climate change, and poverty is expected to rise as global warming worsens. How is that fair?
Let’s get more personal. How do you feel about your insurance rates increasing? Because some insurance companies are already operating at a loss because of the costs inflicted on them by natural disasters.
Who do you think is going to take on the brunt of those costs? It will be you—one way or another—either through direct consumer costs or through government bailouts.
Speaking of which, how do you feel about government spending? Because the cost of prevention is astronomically lower than the cost of trying to clean the mess up later.
The point is, whatever you care about the most, climate change is either already affecting it or will affect it in the immediate future, and it won’t be pretty. If we want a prosperous future, we had better start voting like it and demanding that our politicians, regardless of which side they sit on in Parliament, start taking serious action to protect our future.
We will be voting in federal elections later on in the year. Now is the time to show your local politicians that if they want the youth vote that they so desperately need to get elected, they’re going to have to give us the climate action that we so desperately need to have a future.
Solving the climate crisis is possible. We have overcome great challenges in the past and we can overcome this one, too.
When George Mallory, an explorer who died on Mount Everest, was asked why he wanted to climb Everest, his response was, “Because it is there.” The climate crisis is here, too. It is the biggest mountain mankind has ever faced, and we are all going to have to climb it if we want to continue thriving as a species.
We have a choice: get to climbing or keep on squabbling at the base of the mountain, waiting for an avalanche to consume us.
