Letter: The era of consequence

By Letter to the Editor on August 6, 2021.

Dear editor,

We are entering a new era, I would like to term it as the era of consequence. The pumping metric tons of C02 and methane into the atmosphere has raised the average global temperature by 1 degree Celsius and we are on track to surpass our 1.5 target.

The effects are visible: wildfires burn down whole towns in B.C., drought destroys crops and livestock in the prairies and life in the ocean literally boils to death. Climate change is unignorable and becoming ever more deadly. Two hundred people, men, women and children were killed by torrential flooding in Germany and Belgium. Landslides in India killed over 100, the heat dome played a part in killing over 300 in the course of a week just in B.C.

The most developed nations in the world see their infrastructure crumbling in the face of unprecedented natural disasters, places less wealthy will suffer the worst leading to millions of climate refugees fleeing to safer places like Canada.

While the body count grows from hundreds, to thousands, to inevitably millions, it is important to understand who is to blame for these deaths. In a way we are all partially responsible for sitting idly by and participating by driving cars and eating meat.

But for most of us we had no idea the extent of the damage nor were we the major polluters. Unlike oil executives and corrupt politicians. It is well known now that Exxon executives knew of climate change in 1981. They paid scientists back in the 70s to find out the effects of oil and gas. The answers those scientists came up with are not dissimilar to the reality we live in today. To save their bottom line and prevent us from addressing this problem, oil companies like Exxon funded climate change deniers for 27 years and lobbied governments to not take any action on the matter whatsoever.

Samson Boyer

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