Haben wir uns entschieden, die Heat Dome- und Lytton-Katastrophe 2021 zu vergessen?

>“I thought climate change was a problem for the next generation,” said then-Lytton mayor Jan Polderman. “Now I’m mayor of a town that no longer exists.”

This quote leapt out at me.

If there’s a statement that could encapsulate Canadians‘ views of climate change it’s this: it is a problem for the next generation. Our children and grand children will be left to tend to the wretched mess we’ve made of our planet, but it won’t be *our* problem.

Keep in mind that *this really is an outcome of our present choices as a society*. [More than half of all emissions of the industrial era were emitted since 1990](https://ieep.eu/news/more-than-half-of-all-co2-emissions-since-1751-emitted-in-the-last-30-years/).

But it’s a problem for the next generation. Not that we should hold ourselves responsible for the devastation we have wrought and the human suffering we are causing; *no, it is a problem for the next generation*.

>The heat dome, in other words, took more lives in three days than the pandemic did in a year or the illicit drug supply did over three months. Yet the stories of the hundreds who died that weekend, often alone and unnoticed, in the days before Lytton burned, will probably never be told.

Because confronting it head-on means we have to, as a society in aggregate, dramatically change our behaviour and our expectations of life. Airlines would go out of business, tar would stay in the sands, coal would stay in the ground, animal protein would become a rare luxury, and international freight would return to sail.

Which is to say, it’s not happening any time soon. Not so long as it’s still *a problem for the next generation.*

It is getting worse. It *will be worse*. It needn’t be *an existential threat to humanity*, but due to inaction it is already posing a *civilization-scale threat*.