OPEN LETTER TO PM TRUDEAU

Dear Prime Minster Trudeau,

Congratulations on your election ; best wishes to my Prime Minister.  It is fitting that one of your first challenges will be the Paris UN Convention on Climate Change as that is the most important issue of our day.

          

  In 1935, Carl von Ossietzky was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for revealing that the German authorities were secretly engaging in rearmament contrary to the Versailles Treaty.” Canada, indeed the rest of the world, did nothing to stop the massive arms Aufrüstung  or build up of German military machine.  Because of that inaction the price the world paid was staggering: up to 70 million people died; on average, nearly 30,000 people were being killed every day between 1939 and 1945. The financial cost was $1.075 trillion in 1945 or $11,292 trillion in 2005 dollars. It is impossible to estimate the emotional cost or the suffering of the mentally and physically wounded.

           

 In 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore Jr. "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."  For eight years Canada , indeed most of the countries in the world, have done very little to counteract man-made climate change. Because of that inaction we are already suffering the effects: Climate change is contributing to the deaths of nearly 400,000 people a year and costing the world more than $1.2 trillion, wiping 1.6% annually from global GDP.[i]

          

  Despite the knowledge of the Nazis’ rearmament  in 1935, the world community did not act until war was declared in 1939. Once it was declared, Canada immediately was galvanized to win that war. Canadians united willingly: gas rationing, food rationing, careers, even lives were sacrificed. Politicians didn’t argue about raising money; they spent it as needed and there were no complaints. The war had to be won at all costs.The total value of Canadian war production was almost $10 billion - approximately $100 billion in today’s dollars.

           

For a nation of 11 million people it was an incredible accomplishment. Canadian industrial production during the Second World war.: 11 billion dollars of munitions,1.7 million small arms,43,000 heavy guns,16,000 aircraft,2 million tonnes of explosives,815,000 military vehicles, 50,000 tanks and armoured gun carriers, 9,000 boats and ships,Anti-tank and field artillery,Naval guns, Small arms and automatic weapons, Radar sets and Electronics ,Synthetic rubber, Uranium for the ’Manhattan Project’.[ii]

           

In 1910 William James wrote an essay,  The Moral Equivalent of War in which he argued that “war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community.”

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In 2015, we do have the “moral equivalent of war” the threat to not only our country, but the entire planet. Just as we did in WW2, we can build the necessary millions of wind farms, solar panels, geothermal, tidal and water powered generators, thorium reactors. And we can do it in a decade.

           

Canada was once a leader in addressing climate change. In 1988, we hosted the first-ever international scientific conference on climate change, “Our Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security.”

           

Mr. Trudeau, at the UN Conference on Climate Change, please  restore Canada’s reputation by offering  to reduce Canadian emissions 100% below 1990 levels by 2045, regardless of what other countries do.

            

 “We must stop destroying our environment” wrote John Macfarlane  in  the July/August 2013 Walrus “This challenge transcends nationality …learning to think and behave as citizens of the world, not just of our own nation-states, is what we must all do if we’re to avoid environmental havoc.”

           

 200 scientists in countries around the globe wrote In an open letter :  “We, the undersigned, call upon the world’s political and corporate leaders to take immediate action to prevent seriously disruptive climate change. Evidence of human impact on Earth’s climate is now irrefutable. If we carry on as we are, we could find ourselves in a situation of catastrophic climate destabilization... A crash program is imperative. We need political action now.”

Sincerely and Best Wishes,

Ross Hermiston                                              Hantsport, N.S.                                   25 October, 2015