Elizabeth May: Let's connect the dots

I was talking with a climate scientist the other day. "My wife," he said, "tells me no one wants to hear me say 'I told you so.'"

No doubt. He writes "we were warned." but no one wants to hear that either. And no one, not the CBC nor the Globe and Mail wants to hear us ask "why are people not connecting the dots?". Food costs more when crops fail and heat blisters the early fruit and late frosts kill the seeds before flowering. Who wants to know that low water levels from global heating strand the freighters in their course and disrupt the supply chains, still faltering after COVID. Who wants to connect the dots?

I write this as over 400 wildfires burn across British Columbia and we come to grips with the horrifying news that the scenic mountain village of Jasper, nestled in one of the great wilderness jewels of the planet, a UNESCO world heritage site of Jasper National Park, is engulfed in flames. And what of the bears and the elk and all the forest creatures who like the Australian koalas will have burned paws and walls of fire that block their escape to cool mountain streams?

I know Jasper well. It is one of the few stops on the transcontinental VIA rail voyage where passengers have more than an hour to de-train and explore. I know where to turn to find the pharmacy and which way to go to an excellent Italian restaurant. I wonder if it is still there. As a British Columbian, I know that the hopeful and naive "We will rebuild" sentiment will be met with the harsh reality of "maybe." Lytton burned to the ground in 15 minutes in July 2021 and it took over two years for a single home to be allowed to start reconstruction. The town's bylaws burned up in the fire. So did the town's brand new fire engine, before it could get out of the fire house. And on those same days of extreme heat, my husband's farm, 40 km from Lytton, hit 50 degrees Celsius, and my step-daughter in her thirties nearly died of the heat. Others were not so lucky. According to the BC Coroners office, in four days,  619 BC residents died of heat in that 2021 heat dome.

I will connect the dots - from the greed of Oil and Gas CEOs who want to get every last dollar before the inevitable moment that they are forced to shut down - just as the asbestos industry was forced to shut down and before that, the manufacturers of the chemicals that were destroying the ozone layer.

Now is the race between people fighting for survival and those fighting for the last immoral dollar to line their pockets.

More than ever, we need the voices of elected Greens - in every province and in the Parliament of Canada. To meet moronic rhetoric and rhyming sloganeering with science and evidence. More than ever we need Greens elected who are unafraid to speak the truth and provide the leadership that steers us away from danger to a safer future on a distant shore. We can see it from here. That future is real and achievable, but not when we are separated and afraid.

Elizabeth May, Green Party leader