The winners and losers in this climate crisis

I was encouraged by the Spectator editorial warning that the extreme weather assault that British Columbia residents have endured in the last few months should be recognized as “our climate future.” Finally a clear message that we must act quickly to minimize global warming.

The rest of the editorial confirmed that our climate future is catastrophic, and underlined why the annual global climate conferences have been a long string of failures that serve the billionaire elites.

Ask who are the losers and winners when climate extremes occur. In B.C. the answer is pretty clear. Residents pay with terrifying experiences, disruption, displacement and tragic losses of life, both human and animal. The best hope for “compensation” is partial insurance payouts followed by much higher premiums, or some government assistance to be repaid in higher taxes.

But notice that there are winners, too. The rebuilding and replacement of lost buildings, vehicles, personal possessions, etc. will be a boon to “the economy” for the billionaires who sell all these things. That’s the certain result of every weather catastrophe.

The victims on the ground end up poorer emotionally, financially and physically. And the poorer those victims start out, the poorer they will end up. But that’s also greater “economic opportunity” for already wealthy capitalists.

That’s why our “leaders” are incapable of acting effectively on the climate crisis, or on other disastrous “side effects” of our capitalist economy such as ecological destruction, soil degradation, air pollution, ocean acidification, and the toxification of every aspect of our environment. The cost of these effects of economic “progress” are borne by the 99 per cent, while the profits flow to the one per cent.

This is baked into our system. The fundamental guiding economic principle is freedom to make more money. Those who have the most influence on governments are also those with the most money.

That’s why our governments can simultaneously declare a climate emergency and then buy and expand the Trans-Mountain oil pipeline. The former acknowledges a climate problem, but ensuring “economic benefits” (to oil corporations) trumps it.

That’s how governments can chatter about “truth and reconciliation” and at the same time repeatedly send militarized police to attack Indigenous Wet’suwet’en peoples living on their own unceded ancestral lands. Even in the middle of a climate emergency, the priority is building another private fracked gas pipeline to export more fossil fuel to fry the planet.

The editorial detailed the disastrous B.C. weather events and their clear source in climate change. But then it shifted to what we should do about it, and immediately avoided the causes. It blatantly advised that cutting our fossil fuel emissions is not what should be done, using the excuse that some countries are allegedly doing less to cut emissions than Canada. Instead, the editorial declared “the only sane way to move forward is to be better prepared for what’s coming.”

Unmentioned was that Canada is about the worst global climate offender. Despite being less than half a per cent of the planet’s population, Canada is a top 10 current emitters of greenhouse gases, and in the top 10 cumulative emitters over the last 150 years. On a per person basis, we exceed all industrial countries. And that doesn’t include emissions from the burning of the fossil fuels that we export. That keeps our billionaires happy and the rest of us paying the climate bills.