Pontiac MP Sophie Chatel is hoping to hear from local farmers when she convenes public consultations on sustainable agriculture in early February.
This will be the first of several themes being considered in the elaboration of her initiative Towards a Green and Prosperous Pontiac that she launched late last year.
A vision paper released by the MP in November foresees 2030 as a turning point when the world will shift from reliance on carbon-based energy to a green economy. The paper argues that we either align . . .
our communities and businesses to this trend or risk being left behind.
The consultations will explore opportunities and challenges in a number of sectors, starting with agriculture, in the development of a riding-wide strategy aimed primarily at tackling climate change.
If there is anyone who knows something about climate, it is farmers. Their livelihoods depend on the health of the soil, the presence of microorganisms, the number of growing days in a year, the quantity of rain, the presence of pollinators and the absence of invasive species. And they know all too well how it can all be undone by extreme weather events from hail to flood to drought.
But even farmers growing the food that feeds the world get their share of grief in the climate change blame game. That the wrong end of their ruminants is routinely blamed for methane emissions is neither here nor there. The fact is that we all contribute to global warming one way or another.
Take this newspaper, for example. It is made of trees that would be capturing carbon from the atmosphere had they not been turned into newsprint. There is a good chance it will be used to light a fire in someone’s wood stove (after it’s been thoroughly read, of course). Our reporters travel hundreds of kilometers each week in gas-powered cars to report the local news.
We can blame the oil producers, the car manufacturers, the steel industry, the airlines and even the farmers, but we are all in this together. On a planet where climate oscillations typically span millennia, collectively we have put climate changing processes into motion in the space of just 150 years.
Forest fires in Australia, British Columbia and California, record-high temperatures in the Canadian Arctic and Siberia, and chunks of polar ice caps poised to break off have been among the more dramatic effects over the past few years. Last year, searing temperatures scorched B.C. and a town burned down. Torrential rainfall washed out several of the province’s arterial highways. A spate of tornados hit Kentucky. And on it goes.
It is getting pretty difficult to deny that global warming is real, that it is being caused by excessive amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, and that it is on track to transform the planet into a much less hospitable place to live, to put it mildly.
The debate is no longer about whether something should be done, but about what should be done. Some people see taxing carbon as the solution, others hate the idea. Some see shifting to nuclear power as the answer, others don’t. Some want to be sure that, whatever we do, it doesn’t alter our lifestyles, while others seem open to it, if that’s what it takes.
Against this background, building a shared vision of the way forward presents a fairly daunting challenge. But this is exactly what our MP is inviting us to do by providing input to a plan that will shape our own future.
One thing seems certain. The sooner we take this issue seriously and plan a course of action, the more appealing the range of options still available to us will be.
We should not only give Madame Chatel’s initiative the benefit of the doubt, but the benefit of our best thinking.
Charles Dickson
