I would just like to offer…

I would just like to offer my opinion regarding the cap and trade cancellation act. This seems like a great idea economically, allowing for our local companies in our province to behave in a more free market enterprise, and allowing our economy to subsequently thrive. My issue regarding this is that we hold a higher responsibility than solely that of our economic well-being. Of course, how we perform economically is very important, however, if higher economic productivity comes at the cost of the accelerated depletion of our environments well-being, then it must be brought to our attention what holds an absolute higher value. I’m not here to argue that climate change is human created because we’re all aware it’s not, it’s cyclical. However, human accelerated climate change is our concern and as the largest province in our nation, we hold a greater responsibility to influence our other provinces, and fellow nations, to follow suit. These implications transcend the borders of our province and nation, and as the most recent UN climate report suggests, we are on the cusp of crossing the 1.5C tipping point without urgent and drastic action to reduce emissions. The margins are finer than we think and our timeline is finite in terms of how long we have to act upon this. To give perspective, this is essentially equivalent to a clinical professional advising us to moderare a practice that we are allowing ourselves to abuse and kill us rapidly, but instead we’re ignoring the advice and the information, for short term benefit and gratification.