Climate change denial should be a deal breaker

My brother, Jerry, is a genius. He will, I’m sure, be upset that I have publicly described him as such. But, brother, it’s true. He showed the world that ancient oceans once existed on Mars. Don’t ask me how, but he, and the group of scientists that work for and with him, did it.

He has made a lot of other important discoveries during his long scientific career. My brother has won many prestigious awards for his work. But true to his nature, he doesn’t put them on display or talk much about them. He’s a humble genius.

My brother is a world-renowned geophysicist at Harvard University. He studies the internal dynamics of the Earth. In recent years, he has examined the impact of climate change on sea levels. My brother takes his painstaking work seriously. He doesn’t cut corners. He’s certainly not motivated by ideology. Other scientists rigorously challenge his work before it is published in top-flight scientific publications like Nature and Science.

This is all to say that when my brother assures me, my children and the rest of world that the vast preponderance of scientific evidence supports the finding that climate change is real and a man-made phenomenon, I believe him. I believe him not because he is my brother, but because I know first-hand how hard he and his colleagues around the globe have worked to reach that evidence-backed conclusion.

My brother is not a zealot. He is a careful, judicious scientist.

The same cannot be said about Wildrose party leader Danielle Smith, a former newspaper columnist, and researcher for the notoriously partisan Fraser Institute. Reportedly, Stephen Harper’s former adviser and political scientist, Tom Flanagan, remembered Smith as a “brilliant student.”

The so-called “think-tank” researcher turned politician recently declared that she isn’t convinced that climate change is real. “We’ve been watching the debate in the scientific community, and there is still a debate,” Smith said during a leaders’ debate. “I will continue to watch the debate in the scientific community, but that’s not an excuse not to act.”

Let’s deconstruct that statement. Smith begins with the “We’ve been watching the debate” canard. Who is the “we” that she refers to? Smith didn’t elaborate during the debate. But I suppose she means to say other skeptics, like her, who won’t be duped into believing what more than 90 per cent of know-it-all “eggheads,” like my brother, at “elite” universities like Harvard have concluded about climate change.

Rather, Smith and her like-minded skeptics have been clinging to a rump of dissenters who consider themselves modern-day Galileos because they “bravely” question the scientific orthodoxy proffered by the aforementioned elitist eggheads.

Finally, Smith assured Albertans that she “will continue to watch the debate in the scientific community.” That’s political code for the Wildrose leader is going to continue impersonating an ostrich, dismissing the virtual mountain of evidence about climate change, and deferring to the Galileo wannabes.

Not surprisingly, a large part of the debate audience mocked and booed her, while the other party leaders took turns to hammer Smith. There is no “debate” about climate change and to deny it would undermine Alberta’s international reputation, they rightly charged.

Undeterred, Smith remained, according to one reporter’s account, “poised and unflappable despite the deafening jeers of the crowd.” I suppose that for Smith’s ill-informed supporters, her remarks and “poised” demeanour were evidence of her political courage and steadfastness in the face of attack. Ah, what a powerful image of the politician as a principled martyr.

Fortunately, a good majority of Alberta voters saw through the mirage and gave Smith and her followers a shockingly bruising, and hopefully instructive licking on election day.

Perhaps the “brilliant” Wildrose leader will now come to her senses about climate change instead of parroting and pandering to wilful ignorance. Indeed, the drubbing she suffered at the polls has reportedly triggered Smith to at least reconsider her stance. “I think we have to revisit our position on climate change and whether or not Albertans want to see a more comprehensive policy to deal with greenhouse gases,” Smith told one scribe shortly after her defeat.

Still, Smith risks alienating her political base for musing publicly about her sudden, if tepid change of heart. As a result, she may yet be forced, in today’s political parlance, to “double-down.”

So I have a surefire prescription to offer. I admit it’s largely rhetorical in nature, but it must finally be considered.

Here goes: Right-wing parties love means tests. They set all sorts of conditions for people to obtain social assistance in order, they insist, to weed out fraud and to encourage people to look for work, rather than to rely on a helping hand when they need it most.

Here’s my variation on that theme: I believe that anyone aspiring to public office should be asked to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific data that climate change is real and man-made. If they don’t, then in my view they’re not intellectually fit to serve and should be disqualified from representing most Canadians who have the good sense to recognize this.

Before the often hysterical climate change skeptics start damning me as Joe McCarthy, my proposed test will certainly never be enacted. But it should be.

Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Andrew Mitrovica