Recently we noted a website that lists all the things that have been blamed on climate change, from the disastrous like floods to the comic like sheep changing colour. And while it’s fun to mock the obvious lunacy of many entries on the list, it ceases being funny when the blame-it-on-climate-change crowd threatens to take a really bad situation and make it worse. To wit a CBC story on food insecurity among Canadian First Nations. The inadequacy of food supplies on First Nations reserves is a serious issue that requires a serious response, so its hijacking by the climate axe-grinders as a pretext for demanding yet more draconian climate policies, even though they will hurt First Nations communities more than just about anyone else, should be firmly resisted.
Under the headline “Climate change driving food insecurity in First Nations while government stands by, report says”, the CBC intones that “The warming climate is depleting traditional food sources in First Nations communities in Canada and making it difficult for Indigenous people to live off the land — forcing many to supplement their diets with expensive or unhealthy food imported from other parts of Canada and worsening pre-existing economic and health issues — says the report. The report calls on the government to increase financial and technical support to First Nations to help them address the effects of climate change and to strengthen national climate policies with more ambitious targets for reducing emissions.”
What, exactly, will deeper greenhouse gas cuts do to make food cheaper and more abundant in remote First Nation communities? Worse than nothing, since such policies will make every kind of fuel-dependent activity cost more, including food production, transportation and storage.
It is of course true that on average Canadian aboriginals, especially those living on reserve in remote areas, have less reliable and less healthy diets. But the leap to blaming climate change for fewer caribou and geese migrating to Peawanuck in northern Ontario is absurd. If the northern part of Canada is warming, the result will be a longer growing season, more plants, and more animals eating the plants and also each other. All of which means more to eat for those people who live there. If you put aside the mantra that all effects of climate change are bad and all bad things are caused by climate change it is manifest that whatever may be ailing Canadian aboriginals, including in the matter of diet, it’s not that the tundra is allegedly becoming more fertile.
The problem with this story and the supposed solution goes a lot deeper than mere fatuity. For a great many aboriginals living far from major southern cities, and it should be noted that the vast majority of Canadians including many aboriginals live in urban areas close to our southern border because warmth is good, the biggest hope of developing genuinely self-sustaining, independent prosperity in many generations, with all the direct and indirect health benefits that result from such prosperity, is through resource development. Especially oil and oil pipelines. Which governments have moved relentlessly to suppress because of the supposed threat of climate change.
Activists portray Canadian aboriginals as united in opposition to such projects. But it is not so and, indeed, constitutes stereotyping of a particularly disgraceful sort. The Northern Gateway Pipeline among others was supported by the vast majority of local aboriginal governments. To suggest that the best hope for them to recover their independence and dignity is for the government to strangle the economy at the behest of foreign activists then give them handouts after denying them jobs isn’t funny at all. It’s appalling.
Yes demagogues simply collect data that supports their argument and ignores reversals. It’s a tactic that works on any variable and largely unpredictable events that can be blamed on human activity. It can be countered with an equally-dazzling patchwork of beneficial events but no one is prepared to go down that rabbit hole.
You can't blame our Canadian Aboriginals friends for using a tactic that they've seen proven as effective by our politicians time and time again.
Ive said it before, I will say it again - the effects of Green policies, if not their intent, is racist in the extreme. The imposition of "sustainable development" as a condition of development aid grants and loans, results in energy poverty in developing countries, and continued poverty of people living there. This means terrible work and living conditions, poor health outcomes, generally rapidly increasing populations, poor education, often economic slavery of sections of the population (women and children in particular), and a distressing tendency towards corrupt totalitarian government. Mostly these countries are populated by darker skinned people, and the people and Institutions imposing these policies are generally Western liberal democracies, largely populated by lighter skinned people.
Racism written large, by self satisfied, self appointed elites, with deep roots in the ideology of Fabian Socialism and post modernism.
The fun will really start when these goofs find out that without petrochemicals, food supplies will drop worldwide by 40 to 50 percent within a growing season. Add to that the complete lack of good things like tires on trucks to bring food from where it is grown to the plate in front of them, will result not in just food shortages on first nations reserves, but in Toronto and Vancouver. They should look around the table when they dine tonight and ask themselves which out of every second at the table should starve first. Then in the following season, which of the half that that remain get to die of starvation.
As climate changes perhaps the most significant issue for remote communities will be access. If warming happens and the winter season is less severe or shorter in duration, the winter road season on muskeg and frozen rivers may be shorter, which will reduce the amount of time that these communities have to stock up on supplies. These winter roads are necessary for pretty much all goods that many communities receive.
They will still have months of winter roads in which to truck in their yearly quota of tundra and ice destroying diesel they burn everywhere to generate power.
Same goes for Arctic coastal communities that get theirs by ship in the summer
All modern life in Canada’s north come to a halt without diesel, period.
Wish they would bring that up while telling all ya southies we need to change ASAP