We Need to Listen to Our Youth. It is Their Planet We're Destroying

This video should be a wake-up call for the adults in this country. It is not our planet we're destroying, it's theirs, and to suggest we postpone action on climate change until we are in a better economic position, is a horrible way to look at this. We can always get more money. We can't get another planet.

Earlier in the week, we saw 'flash mob' protests when Parliament was sitting, and the news of the day was whether or not Jack Layton and the NDP were behind them, since the leader of the group is a known NDP activist.

I myself posted on this, but my anger was not at the protesters, but the hypocrisy, if indeed he was. The NDP bill designed to hold the government's feet to fire on global warming, is a step in the right direction. However, a better step would have been for Mr. Layton to support the Green Shift, or at least not campaign against the Carbon Tax for political gain.

He has since admitted that it was wrong for him to have done that, but the Reformers have made the 'Carbon Tax' out to be public enemy number one, so there's no going back now.

Liberal MP Glen Pearson summed up the situation very well:

"What transpired yesterday is something of an indicator as to what Parliament and the country itself has come to. Protesters felt the need to invade a sacred place; parliamentarians looked uncomfortable and somewhat unmoved; and the media raced out into the halls to grab their pictures and stories of young people being muscled out of the Parliament buildings.

"We’re better than this – all of us. The bill itself was asking us to treat climate change seriously. We haven’t and we’ll pay for it in world opinion at Copenhagen, not to mention global devastation. The difficult things we will face in our future – environmental degradation, terrorism, starvation, poverty – demand outrage, attention and a sense of urgency. Parliament can’t muster up that kind of anger, except to lob our partisan attacks.

So, these young people brought it into our own ballpark, trying to give us a wake-up call."

I'm not so sure that the bill being passed will make much of a difference. In Harper's world, global warming is a 'theory', so he'll probably just do what he wants anyway. I agree with Mr. Pearson. Something is better than nothing and we need to listen to our youth.

As a blogger I received an advance copy of a new book Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, by James Hoggan. It's not really based on the science, but the PR campaigns to discredit the science, and the money behind them.

I started reading it yesterday, and while I was well aware of the 'climate change denier' movement, I had no idea just how organized and brutal they were.

I will be sharing revelations from the book in several posts. We need to pay attention and not get sucked into these false claims, because when you follow the money, it becomes clear that they are being funded by those who stand the most to lose by action.

However, we stand the most to lose by inaction.