Saving the world with science, one leader at a time

The federal Green Party under Elizabeth May made history last week when they scored a major victory in the Nanaimo by-election with the election of Paul Manly. This was great news for all of us, but especially Green supporters as it effectively doubles the number of Green MPs in Ottawa to two! Finally, Elizabeth May will have a colleague in parliament. This victory comes on top of the Greens’ recent breakthrough in Prince Edward Island, where they formed the official opposition.

In World War II, people around the world put aside their political differences to focus on a common and urgent world threat — fascism. The ecological crisis our planet faces today is no less dire.

The UN recently released a report prepared by 150 biodiversity experts from 50 countries warning of the unprecedented, imminent extinction of 1 million species of plants and animals in the next few decades, unless we take immediate steps to protect and restore habitat and radically shift away from industrial agriculture.

BC’s wildfire season is now underway — far earlier than normal. Fires burning outside of Osoyoos and west of Prince George have already forced residents from their homes.

Last week, temperature records in the northern hemisphere were smashed. Temperatures near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean in northwest Russia reached 29°C, well above the normal of 12°C for this time of year. Parts of Finland hit a record 25°C.

About the same time, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory, which has been monitoring carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere for 60+ years, reported that carbon dioxide levels reached just over 415 parts per million last Friday — the highest level recorded since the observatory started analyzing atmospheric greenhouse gases in 1958. This is the most carbon in the atmosphere since the dawn of humankind — the most carbon in the 800,000 years that scientists have such data for.

Remember that Bill McKibben’s 350.org — an international environmental movement to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy — took its name from scientists’ best advice that humankind should do everything in its power to limit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to just 350 ppm. We have utterly failed at achieving this vital goal.

If we are to survive the existential threat of environmental collapse, we must elect governments willing to tackle the problem with the same level of urgent action that we witnessed in World War II.

I like the way Bill Nye the Science Guy put it recently: First he called out leaders who’ve been stalling on climate action. “You idiots!” he said. Then he pointed out two things: Science serves every one of us, and science must shape policy.

More than ever, we need leaders like Paul Manly and Elizabeth May, who base their decisions on science to combat the global threats we face.