Last week… with shock… I read an article about a speech by David Suzuki in which he said, in essence, that politicians who question or stand in the way of implementing the Kyoto Protocol… “should go to jail for what they’re not doing right now What our government is not doing is a criminal act.”
The story showed up in a lot of places, but the original source seems to have been the National Post, which went over the top in its criticism of him.
Take a look at “By any means necessary”, by Terry O’Neill in last Thursday’s Post.
Or this follow-up story “Jail politicians who ignore climate science: Suzuki”, by Craig Offman published the same day.
But then during the Super Bowl it all started looking a bit too real.
You may have seen the Audi Ad “The Green Police”, which imagined a world where people are arrested for even the smallest environmental infracation.
Satirical? Of course. But clearly, there were a few people, like David Suzuki, who might have seen it and thought, “if only”.
This is extremely important to me. The open war between Environmentalists and Climate Change Skeptics is growing in intensity.
On one side you have the skeptics, who are underhandedly killing the reputations of the IPCC and the climate science community.
On the other side, you have frustrated environmental activists growing more militant and sometimes… violent.
I know, I grew up in Dawson Creek, BC, where someone (we’re still not 100% sure) spent the last year trying to blow up gas pipelines to make that point. My family is still there. It was serious… potentially deadly, and it was scary.
Do we need to take action on climate change? Yes. But not that way.
Please, no green police. And no more green vigilantes.
