I wished I had that optimism

I read this article in The Record a while ago and quite liked it, apart from the comments some dumbhead posted below: Ottawa should heed local green initiatives


The article is about Canadian government's stance on the Kyoto Protocol, their behaviour at the United Nations Climate Change Conference and Harper's environmental ignorance. Although a lot of Canadians probably (hopefully) shook their heads at all of those, I'm sure there are, tragically but true, Canadians who share the government's and prime minister's stand. Alone this sentence from the article makes me wonder how much idiocy is still left (lots, too much): "Environment Canada’s 2011 report on Canadian emissions showed that we will increase our output of greenhouse gases by 18 per cent by the end of this decade, with continued upwards momentum." Who's proud of that?



Canada is looking to export oil to China, meantime the USA is having their own internal fights over the Keystone XL pipeline. Others again suggest to build refineries in Canada and use the oil here instead of selling it. For the greedy oil companies in the tar sands just nothing moves fast enough.They want to expand until they've ruined half of Alberta (and Saskatchewan). Subsidies for citizens who'd like to support alternative energies have been cut, as in the case of solar power. The "Environment Minister" Peter Kent gave his go-ahead for Brewster's Glacier Discovery Walk in Jasper National Park and more Disney-esque attractions are already in the planning for another national park. What's next? My hope is that people boykott all of it! 

The author of the article points out that local, municipal and provincial initiatives can take actions towards a more sustainable life but all of them will have a hard time considering the lack of support from the feds. The important sentence here is possibly, "Demonize the government all you want, but do not use that as an excuse for inaction." Unfortunately, there's only so far you can get with these initiatives and I am sure more people would think about change towards an  environmentally-friendly behaviour if the government set a good example, or let's say if the government pressured its citizens into it. It's good to see there's optimism but the power of polluting corporations in this country goes way to far.