{"id":22002,"date":"2016-10-16T12:06:41","date_gmt":"2016-10-16T17:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22002"},"modified":"2016-10-16T12:06:41","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T17:06:41","slug":"david-suzuki-we-cant-dig-our-way-out-of-the-fossil-fuels-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22002","title":{"rendered":"David Suzuki: We Can\u2019t Dig Our Way Out of the Fossil Fuels Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2016\/10\/12\/we-can-t-dig-our-way-out-fossil-fuels-hole\">David Suzuki: We Can\u2019t Dig Our Way Out of the Fossil Fuels Hole<\/a><\/h3>\n<article class=\"node-11059 node node-blog node-promoted view-mode-full clearfix\">\n<header>\n<p class=\"submitted desktop-only\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/tarsands-redux-47_0.jpg?itok=VLsmfavc\" alt=\"\" width=\"826\" height=\"551\" \/><\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"horizontal-social-bar horizontal-social-bar-top clearfix\">\n<div class=\"horizontal-share-left\">I\u2019ve often thought politicians inhabit a parallel universe. Maybe it\u2019s just widespread cognitive dissonance, coupled with a lack of imagination, that compels them to engage in so much contradictory behaviour. Trying to appease so many varying interests isn\u2019t\u00a0easy.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p>Rather than focusing on short-term economic and corporate priorities, though, politicians should first consider the long-term health and well-being of the people they\u2019re elected to represent. When it comes to climate change and fossil fuels, many aren\u2019t living up to\u00a0that.<\/p>\n<p>We celebrate the federal government\u2019s decision to implement\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestar.com\/opinion\/commentary\/2016\/10\/05\/trudeaus-carbon-price-is-too-low-to-do-the-job-walkom.html\" target=\"_blank\">nation-wide carbon pricing<\/a>, even though what\u2019s proposed won\u2019t, without additional measures like regulations, get us to our commitments under the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ecowatch.com\/james-hansen-climate-change-2030724330.html\" target=\"_blank\">Paris Agreement, which is also inadequate<\/a>\u00a0for keeping global warming from catastrophic levels. A government could be forgiven for going slow on a measure opposed by some industrial sectors, provinces and citizens, but it\u2019s difficult to take a government seriously when it approves or supports expanding fossil fuel infrastructure and development while the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/rabble.ca\/blogs\/bloggers\/david-suzuki\/2016\/06\/broken-records-define-climate-crisis\" target=\"_blank\">world continues to break warming records<\/a>, with increasingly dire\u00a0consequences.<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmog.ca\/2016\/09\/27\/trudeau-just-approved-giant-carbon-bomb-b-c\" target=\"_blank\">massive\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">B.C.<\/span>\u00a0\u201ccarbon bomb\u201d\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">LNG<\/span>\u00a0project<\/a>\u00a0in the midst of critical salmon-rearing territory, in defiance of many area First Nations\u2019 wishes. Likely approval of at least\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/whats-coming-for-transmountain-1.3782549\" target=\"_blank\">one more bitumen pipeline<\/a>\u00a0to support expanded oil sands development. A\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/edmonton\/no-support-for-national-carbon-plan-until-pipeline-progress-made-notley-warns-pm-1.3789167\" target=\"_blank\">provincial government that pretty much says<\/a>, \u201cWe\u2019ll support federal efforts to fight climate change if you support our efforts to fuel it.\u201d None of this makes\u00a0sense.<\/p>\n<p>As a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/priceofoil.org\/2016\/09\/22\/the-skys-limit-report\/\" target=\"_blank\">report from non-profit Oil Change International<\/a>\u00a0and 14 other groups concludes, \u201cThe potential carbon emissions from the oil, gas, and coal in the world\u2019s currently operating fields and mines would take us beyond 2\u00b0C of warming,\u201d and \u201cThe reserves in currently operating oil and gas fields alone, even with no coal, would take the world beyond 1.5\u00b0C.\u201d That\u2019s without any new\u00a0development!<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Suzuki: We Can\u2019t Dig Our Way Out of the Fossil Fuels Hole I\u2019ve often thought politicians inhabit a parallel universe. Maybe it\u2019s just widespread cognitive dissonance, coupled with a lack of imagination, that compels them to engage in so much contradictory behaviour. Trying to appease so many varying interests isn\u2019t\u00a0easy. Rather than focusing on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[94,103,113,141,2675,1080,5317,328],"class_list":["post-22002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-cognitive-dissonance","tag-david-suzuki","tag-desmog-blog","tag-fossil-fuels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22003,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22002\/revisions\/22003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}