It is not the first time that we have noticed it: when the forests burn, the stars are magnificent. The sun on Monday evening was a neon orange with blurred outlines. Tuesday morning, it was still abnormally magnified.
On Monday, at the café, it is as if a color filter had been applied to the windows: the exterior seemed artificially yellowed, courtesy of the fine particles that reach us from the many paths of the fires.
These same fine particles change the vision that one can have of the world until New York where, it seems, the Quebec smog colored the sky, Monday evening. Again, the photos are magnificent… Even if the atmosphere of the American Northeast is polluted as it had not been since 2019.
Some speak of these dangerously beautiful images as those of the end of the world. This is undoubtedly the sign of the end of a world: almost every summer for years, we beat a heat record set the previous summer. The new world will be much less temperate. As the adage coined by I don’t know who goes: Don’t say this summer is hot, say it’s the coolest of years to come…
Are these forest fires an undeniable effect of climate change? Scientists say it over and over again: it’s hard to take A event and to say: here it is, it is linked to global warming… What they are saying is that extreme climatic events will multiply, because of global warming.
Is what is happening in Quebec “extreme”? It seems like. Two years ago, a Canadian heat record was set in Lytton, British Columbia: 49.6˚C, in a “heat dome” setting. A few days later, the village of Lytton was razed by a gigantic forest fire. Hello symbol…
I know, I know: we have to “fight” climate change. The problem is still and always the lack of political will. Here and elsewhere. That’s the short version.
The long version is that political will is only the tail of the dog. The dog is us. We who vote. We, who give legitimacy to our rulers. The dog chooses on which side its tail wags, I mean that our priorities impose those of the political parties that solicit our votes…
The environment, the climate? Far, well, well, far behind tax cuts, access to health care, filling potholes and everything that constitutes the main part of the electoral buffet.
The environment, the climate? That’s priority… number 28.
If you doubt it, answer this question: is there a government in this country, provincial or federal, that for 20 years has been defeated on the issue of the environment, the climate?
Answer, and I want to be contradicted: no… On the contrary.
Take the QAC. The party of François Legault campaigned on a program and electoral promises devoid of any ambition in terms of climate. No big deal, he won a super majority of 90 deputies.
Take Alberta. The Conservative candidate was elected Prime Minister promising to fight anything the federal government might be tempted to impose as a measure to reduce greenhouse gases.
Take the federal government. The Liberal Party of Canada is posing as a climate champion. Its federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, was for a generation the face of the fight against climate change, the one who warned of the dangers of global warming and who even climbed the CN tower to hang a banner there: CANADA AND BUSH-CLIMATE KILLERS…
Having become a minister, Steven Guilbeault authorized the oil drilling project in the Bay du Nord sea – since put on hold – off the coast of Newfoundland.
PHOTO SEAN KILPATRICK, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change
Having become minister, Steven Guilbeault gave his approval to the extraction of a billion barrels of oil from the seabed. A hundred thousand people could abandon their tank for a BIXI tomorrow morning, that will not compensate for this billion barrels of oil.
It is, however, a fairly simple equation: the more we dig to get gas and oil out of the ground, the less clean energies will be attractive to investors, the longer they will take to impose themselves. Mr. Guilbeault knows this principle, he could talk about it for hours without looking at his notes.
Mr. Guilbeault could have resigned rather than authorize this billion barrels, as a French Minister of the Environment tired of swallowing snakes did, a few years ago. But Mr. Guilbeault seems to be a big fan of snake tartare.
So we can blame politics. I do. We can blame individuals in positions of responsibility. I do.
But we, citizens, must nevertheless examine our conscience: if Mr. Guilbeault was able to give the green light to a project that will add a billion barrels of oil to Canada’s carbon footprint, it is mainly because there is no political price to pay for such a decision.
The environment, the climate, it’s wonderful for the cover page of the political marketing plan. But it doesn’t pay off politically. And that is neither the fault of Steven Guilbeault nor that of all the Ministers of the Environment for three decades as well as their Prime Ministers, no, it is the fault of those who vote. Our fault.
As long as there is no political price to pay for climate half-measures, we will continue to tackle the climate crisis with political half-measures.
Half-measures have “paid off” for more than 30 years, since the Rio Summit which imposed the climate on consciences and in the public sphere.
And I doubt that the smell of burning forests changes anything to this reality, nor the dangerously beautiful images that result from it.