It is shocking how quickly things can fall apart if one sleeps longer than five hours a night, or you take a week off. Committees-with-Agendas never rest and like to make changes and unrealistic announcements when they think no one is listening. When David Suzuki starts sending emails of advice to council in cities where he doesn’t live to pass the proposed Climate Plan, we should be setting our alarms earlier than normal.
Rumor has it our shortage of workers will have to be solved by retirees picking up ‘the slack’ by coming out of retirement to fill the worker gaps. The talk around that solution isn’t because they have decided to alter their travel plans, but is due to rising inflation and a need to cover their own daily living costs. And now this.
I was hoping to save this for another day, but the announcement by City Council that residents of Calgary can expect to fund a 90-plus page report that holds a casual number of putting Calgarians on the hook for $87B of changes between now and 2050, because we consume too much, is beyond shocking. I feel compelled to throw in the obvious.
- Any businessperson knows you cannot logically plan a budget 30 years out, and
- The City has never stayed on budget on any project, so that number will naturally grow.
There are claims that two other levels of government will fund much of it and private investment the rest. My question is, do they realize we know who the funder of those ‘other levels of government’ are? And, given the ongoing demonizing of our main provincial source of revenue one can only wonder what private investment they have in mind. They did however mention that we all have ‘to be prepared to suffer some’. I don’t recall if that ‘some’ was in caps or not.
If fear of resource depletion is really a concern, or the fourth of the Horsemen of sustainable development, it is hard to know how that level of funding is possible. The narrative is that the Earth’s natural resources are finite, that society has exceeded the capacity of our planet and our resources are rapidly being depleted. Their sustainable development demands that people forget consumption and that business and governments replace economic growth with green alternatives.
People in Third World countries naturally aspire to First World living standards. It is highly untenable politically for First World leaders to propose to their own citizens that they lower their standards of living and accept untenable tax increases. I suggest it is up to us to encourage and help other people to achieve a higher standard of living without undermining the standard we have spent years achieving. This is when the true leaders will show what can be accomplished without giving up the resources that got us here today.
There is no real evidence that resources are depleting as today we have the greatest access to resources in history and there is evidence to suggest their availability can continue to grow if allowed. It appears the reference to natural resources is somewhat misleading. Nature is a given, but resources must be created by people. Nature doesn’t do it for us. We just need to share that knowledge.
