The Green Budget Coalition in 2024 is made up of 21 of the leading Canadian environmental activist organizations publicly lobbying for $287 billion in government spending on their causes.
That is 62% of the total federal tax revenue.
According to public data, in Canada alone these organizations control billions in funds, raise and spend millions on PR campaigns and employ hundreds of staff to achieve these objectives. Globally, the climate activism industry controls trillions of dollars and has armies of advocates. This politicisation of public policy impacts every Canadian.
Even when done with the best intentions, power without oversight isn’t peace, order or good government. To advocate for the best policy, we encourage a range of views, even the controversial ones. We dare to question, to be wrong and to explore all sides of complex issues.
Strange Math
Carbon dioxide gets a lot of attention compared to the many other environmental concerns. Every bad weather event gets assigned to it. The main player in the greenhouse effect remains water and clouds. A changing climate may be unpredictable but that does not mean abnormal.
With prosperity comes costs which must be balanced against the benefits. Strange does not mean unexplainable. Proclamations of doom and crisis are always suspicious.
Odd Incentives
Big Oil, corporate interests, corrupt politicians, conspiracy theorists, corporate PR firms and paid skeptics. These are all boogeymen for why, despite general popularity and political backing, there remains a dire crisis with minimal progress.
What if the crisis is exactly because the incentives are designed to perpetuate a cycle? What if the problem isn’t bad intentions or ethics but a social mission over funded to irreverence which needs to be called out as ineffective?
Motivated Reasoning
Motivated reasoning is choosing only the good parts of a story well ignoring the rest because it is what we want to believe. It is quite common in everyday life. When it comes to climate change, calm, pragmatic discussions are rare with many complex and passionate explanations and perspectives.
Those complex explanations may well be accurate, but any analysis of climate change must acknowledge the issue has emotional and personal implications for many Canadians.
When speaking unpopular opinions, one’s intelligence, integrity and ethics will almost always come under fire. When speaking popular opinions rarely is there such scrutiny. It’s human to deeply care for our environment. Why don’t we see the mass implementation of responsible governance, moderation & sustainability? Why so much green washing? Why are 9/10 solutions just shifting our problems into other people’s lands.
Transporting environmental destruction from Canada to Qatar, China or Nigeria is not ethical or effective. If being sustainable was easy or obvious someone would have done it long ago.
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The Most Revolutionary Act 