Climate change is the biggest threat to our way of life

By Lethbridge Herald on July 7, 2023.

Editor:

Why did two-thirds of Wednesday’s (June 28) Lethbridge Herald poll participants indicate they felt that Canada does not need to react more strongly to climate change? Do they think it is OK to allow the world to get so hot that animals and humans cannot survive? Do they think that they themselves will not be impacted? Have they not noticed the news that 487 Canadian forests are now burning, and that the smoke from these fires is currently causing health problems even in large American cities? Do they realize that the effect of climate change is causing glaciers to shrink and sea levels to rise, to cause animal numbers to dwindle or become extinct, to cause areas of the world to become unlivable because of the increasing heat and/ or lack of water. Research shows that the planet hasn’t been this hot in at least 1,000 years. 

 We all depend on the dominant economy of our area, which is ranching and farming. Our climate here in Alberta is also semi-arid, and climate change is the biggest threat to our way of life. Do we think that we, or our families are going to be forever unaffected? Really?

But even if you personally are not certain that all the climate change research is true, would it not be safer to take specific safeguards we know to be effective now, (just in case), instead of risking our world with your uncertainty? Maybe people think that they don’t need to react to climate change because it hasn’t yet affected them yet, personally, or they just don’t know what they can do to help – (a reasonable reaction). If so, we encourage you to watch a new Netflix production by David Attenborough and Johan Rockström, Breaking Boundaries: The Science of our Planet. Or, read No Miracles Needed by Mark Z. Jacobson (2023), and follow their advice.

 Attenborough and Rockström admit we have already advanced beyond some “tipping points” on climate change, but doing nothing or too little seems to us to be both practically and morally wrong.

June and Jim Tagg

Lethbridge