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Justin Trudeau’s love of fossil fuel will only make Canada’s extreme weather worse
(The Guardian, 8 Jul 2021) In Canada, almost every policy to help wean us off fossil fuel has been watered down by oil and gas lobbyists.
After recording the country’s highest ever temperatures of 49.6C, the town of Lytton in British Columbia, Canada, burst into flames. Residents had minutes to flee a “wall of fire” with nothing but the clothing on their backs. Like people in many other places in the world struggling with heatwaves, fires, droughts and strange extreme storms, BC residents now know what it feels like to live in a changing climate on an increasingly inhospitable planet.
It’s the helplessness you feel as a mother when your son is throwing up from heat exhaustion. It’s the fear you feel when your asthmatic niece struggles to breathe because of the dense smoke from wildfires. It’s the panic you feel when you know that your oldest son is out in northern British Columbia tree planting and that there are now 180 wildfires raging across the province, caused by unprecedented “fire weather” – 710,000 lightning strikes in a 24-hour period.
It’s also the anger you feel when you know that our government has utterly failed to take the actions necessary to keep us safe. The most recent data, despite the Trudeau government’s claims of climate leadership, shows that Canada has made no progress in reducing emissions. Canada’s emissions are higher today than they were in 1990 and Canada is performing worse on climate change than any other G7 country.
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The Guardian, 8 Jul 2021: Justin Trudeau’s love of fossil fuel will only make Canada’s extreme weather worse
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