Cuthand: Canada should care about climate, not U.S. cabinet

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This week the news cycle has been dominated by Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as the weather bomb on the west coast.

The COP29 conference taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan seems to have fallen off the radar and yet our future is more dependent on a consensus of world leaders to fight climate change than Trump’s ephemeral cabinet picks.

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COP29 refers to the Conference of the Parties to the UN convention on climate change. This marks the annual gathering’s 29th year.

Past years have seen targets set and serious commitments made and supported by the group. Now it appears that authoritarian governments and oil companies are setting the agenda.

The host country, Azerbaijan, is a petro-state with a third of its GDP from oil and gas, which also account for 90 per cent of its exports. Last year, COP28 was held in Dubai, another petro-state.

The petro-states want the publicity that gives the impression they actually care about the environment and it’s an excellent opportunity to showcase their nation and, in the case of Azerbaijan, an opportunity to make oil deals.

Before the conference got underway, the BBC reported that a senior COP29 official from the host nation was trying to negotiate a fossil fuel deal with an oil and gas investment group.

That a petro-state should host a COP gathering is a conflict of interest. They are selling the products that are the root cause of the climate crises that COP was set up to address.

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Opportunists and climate change deniers aren’t limited to the petro-states. Trump considers climate change a hoax and has urged the oil companies to drill and drill.

He has appointed science deniers to his cabinet and he will most likely remove the restrictions and environmental controls on oil and gas exploration.

In Canada, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is dead set against a carbon tax and repeats ad nauseam his mantra to “axe the tax.” He and his party are at war with reality in the search for victory in the next election. Instead, we need to reconsider carbon taxing.

It’s a proven fair way to address a serious issue. Most of the tax is returned to middle-class and low-income families in the form of a rebate, which has become an inflation fighter for them.

2023 was the hottest year on record and 2024 is on track to be the hottest. Every year we experience serious forest fires and droughts. The cost of insurance is rising rapidly and in some places, such as rural Northern California, it’s very hard or impossible to insure a home from fire.

The same thing is happening in hurricane-prone Florida and on various flood plains. The politicians may try to ignore it, but the reality is obvious in commerce.

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In Canada, rather than axing the carbon tax, we should seriously consider phasing out the oil extraction in the Alberta tarsands. They are creating an environmental mess with no plans to reclaim the land.

Downstream Indigenous communities are experiencing rare cancers that are traced back to the effluent in the Athabasca River from the oil extraction plants.

Right-wing and authoritarian leaders are doing serious harm by seeking short-term gain, while ignoring the long-term pain of global warming. We need to get serious as the world warms, sea levels rise and the forests disappear.

Inside this crisis exists opportunity. We need to listen to Indigenous elders and traditional people who have a world view that doesn’t place humankind at the top of the heap and seeking to inherit a world made for them. Instead, we are a part of the ecosystem, and we live alongside the other beings.

Also, opportunity exists in the creation and use of new technologies. As we move toward a post-carbon society, those nations that adapt to change will be best situated in the future.

Eventually, the internal combustion engine will disappear and be remembered much like the steam engine — romantic, but inefficient and a danger to the environment.

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It might be a cliché, but we are at a crossroads. Either we address the reality of global warming, or we inhabit a world of climate chaos and rising temperatures.

Doug Cuthand is the Indigenous affairs columnist for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the Regina Leader-Post. He is a member of the Little Pine First Nation.

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