Misguided Priorities

While worldwide famine and drought and species extinction might seem like a small price to pay for making a bundle on the depletion of Canadian and American energy reserves, the accelerated extraction and export of coal, oil and gas to China has a limited payback. Regardless of the billions banked by investors and governments over the coming decades, looming at the grande finale of the fossil fuel extravaganza is unparallelled misery. When all is said and done, the climate change impacts from the turbo-charged carbonizing of North American energy projected over the next half century are beyond any society’s ability to adapt or recover. In other words, the certainty of utter devastation — as documented by all scientific bodies worldwide — is still deemed a reasonable risk to take by the governments of Canada and the US. Indeed, it is presently promoted by both financiers and politicians as indispensable to our way of life. Unfortunately, due to their misguided priorities, that way of life is fast coming to a close.