In response to the Goldstream Gazette editorial in the Sept. 18 edition, 'Prudent planning beats crossing our fingers', why is it we are still willing to excuse climate change deniers, as if the evidence isn't staring us all in the face, and as if the results of human-caused climate change aren't accelerating and becoming more and more dangerous and costly, with replacing destroyed infrastructure and to our insurance premiums? Even private property insurers are begging the federal and provincial governments to get off their butts and start acting "as if" we are in the dire straights we are actually in.
I used to think that if a person had their home burn down to the ground multiple times a decade, due to bone dry drought conditions in forests, excessive temperatures and heightened incidents of lightning, or their houses and land getting flooded every few years, due to warming oceans causing excessive water evaporation and developing into atmospheric rivers, as well as increased hurricane and tropical typhoon activity, tornadoes, hail storms, and other extreme weather, that some switch might turn on.
However, based upon the support premiers like Danielle Smith, in Alberta, continue to receive from a segment of that province's voters, (and the support for the current federal Conservative leader, with his "axe the tax" nonsense solutions), it becomes clear that even having a beautiful, irreplaceable national park and major tourist attraction, devastated by wildfire, will not change some people's crackpot belief systems.
I do wonder what it will take?
Arthur Entlich
Colwood
