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Letter: Fletcher off base on climate change

In his latest column, Tom Fletcher bemoans the fact that U.S. citizens care as much about the environment as Canadian citizens do. He bewails the fact that thoughtful Americans and Canadians work together in an organized fashion against expansion of the fossil fuel industry.
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In his latest column, Tom Fletcher bemoans the fact that U.S. citizens care as much about the environment as Canadian citizens do. He bewails the fact that thoughtful Americans and Canadians work together in an organized fashion against expansion of the fossil fuel industry.

People concerned about the environment thinking? Organizing? Planning? Doing things other folks do, just as if they were….folks?

Mr. Fletcher finds this… evil.

People who care about global warming and protecting the environment – on both sides of the border and around the world – actually do think and organize and plan. They believe the overwhelming evidence that global climate change is causing catastrophic changes and significant harms, and that the extraction of fossil fuels plays a central role in making this happen.

Unlike Mr. Fletcher.

He coyly omits the fact that his wife worked in Christy Clark’s expansive public relations division, and that Christy Clark’s best bud (and major source of political cash!) was the oil and gas industry; she toiled relentlessly to promote it – inviting it to secretly shape her meaningless “Climate Action Plan” – and consistently acted as if producers of LNG (from fracked gas), oil and coal were just nice guys trying to help out.

Mr. Fletcher refuses to disclose that the fossil fuel industry spends literally billions of dollars on public relations to try and denigrate and if possible eliminate any opposition to its business plans, using every trick in the playbook.

Yes, individuals and groups are now, in an organized fashion, spending a few million dollars to challenge the billions of the oil and gas giants.

They’re convinced (along with the thousands of climate scientists, from 195 countries, who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that rapidly and artificially heating up Planet Earth is a crisis. Which we must address.

Warren Bell