Carey Rutherford

CalgaryCanada

DiEM25 Member

Having travelled through Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, the saddest part of modern Canadiana is our strident divisions. No-one is surprised anymore for there to be 2 groups, with opposing views, protesting face-to-face (behind Covid masks) on any given day; also, that we will place ourselves firmly with one of those groups and don’t really get how someone can sensibly be in the other one! And yet, they are.

With a very few exceptions, those ‘others’ aren’t criminals or rapists or terrorists: they are the results of the echo chambers and inner-facing circles who talk amongst sympathetic fellows and may have forgotten how to reach across the gaps between us.

Witness the climate controversy in Alberta: commenting on the impact of a couple of centuries of increasing waste and pollution doesn’t mean that Group A is at fault and Group B is the hapless victim! Notice that the globe, being a ball with gravity and an atmosphere, is a closed system which all members of our living family have been using for aeons. And overusing it, as a species, for less of that time.

Denying highly credible hard science about the changes occurring in every biome on the planet, because it suggests uncomfortably that blame be assigned, misses the entire point: science is NOT about blame! Science is about observed facts, repeatedly measured, and connected through logical analysis.

Saying “It doesn’t seem likely to me,” because day-to-day experience doesn’t make it obvious is an example of why someone else must spend their life in ridiculously detailed, long-term measurements. Measurements that show us that our climate is changing: witness the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 600 page Synthesis Report on Global Warming and Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways from 2018, assessing over 6000 research articles; or the 2022, 3600 page assessment of climate change Impacts, Adaptation andVulnerabilities, the decision-making possibilities in 34,000 different research references. Detailed work by researchers, from all manner of backgrounds, that is not about blame, but about what’s happening and what to do about it.

What does “Climate Change” suggest to you, or to those around you? Are there things which startle you, create anxiety in you, or more simply confuse you? Do you have the sense that, like Quantum Mechanics, climate sciences are beyond the understanding of normal people? And yet, are you concerned by the things that seem changed in our weather, our resources, and our skies?

I have created summaries of the most recent IPCC reports and I hope you will benefit from the highly accredited information they provide.