“My God, Chamberlain, give it up!” That may well be your reaction to a point I’ve made over and over on these pages. Well I can’t help it. Reactions to the recent COP 2021 Summit in Glasgow frustrated me painfully.

Now I believe in global warming and the  dangers it poses. Every country needs to do its part in coping with it. BUT Canada is often mentioned--by Canadian critics as well as others--as one of the world’s highest per capita consumers of fossil fuels. True, however 90% of the speakers and writers who remind us of that seem to forget two important facts: They are: (a) Canada is big, and (b) Canada is cold.

If you think Canada could ever match countries like France in our carbon footprint consider: France is slightly smaller in area (640.000 sq km) than Saskatchewan (651, 900 sq km). But it has  a population of 61.4 million. Saskatchewan’s population is 1.16 million. That means that a French citizen will have most of the goods and services he needs and desires available some blocks away. But rural Saskatchewanians often must (as I did) drive many thousands of miles per year to get necessary goods and services and other  choices. And even Canadian city dwellers involved in business, government , entertainment, and many other kinds of  organizations and requirements must spend huge time and energy in traveling, often by air, throughout our vast and sparsely populated  nation. 

No matter how hard we try to reduce our need for energy to fuel our great transportation needs and to keep us alive in a very cold country (France is much warmer) we will always consume far more energy per person than France will. Also Saskatchewan and other provinces are major agricultural producers and the world depends on our products. Can you imagine a prairie farmer, often with two or three million dollars invested in fossil fuel-consuming equipment, having to get rid of it and acquire some new sort of replacements using some different kind of energy?  That’s not going to happen in one, two, or possibly even three decades.

I’m not saying we can avoid all drastic changes, but expecting every country to end up with the same per capita rate of  energy use is not fair and not possible.

Sometimes I’m offended by remarks made on TV, newspapers and other media. But I want to hear those remarks and I want to know where they come from.

Voltaire was a famous French philosopher of the 18th century, whose writings were important to the development of democracy. He once said, “I wholly disagree with what you say and will contend to death your right to say it.” This statement has been used thousands of times to promote freedom of debate and of expression.

Freedom of expression (speech, press, media). It is the basis of all our freedoms. It allows for the debate and fact-seeking necessary for a large enough segment of the population to be informed and to bring about the institutions (elections, courts of law, education,  personal freedoms, citizenship rights and others) that make democracy work.

Many Canadians are not 100% supporters of Voltaire’s statement. And though the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms includes the right of free speech, there is much pressure to counter what is called “hate speech”.  Section one of the Charter and parliamentary Bill C-10 include some regulation--not very specific--of media content. And some commentators and activists want this to extend to public remarks that would make some groups of people--including certain minorities--feel “offended”, and even “unsafe”.

Now I would never deliberately offend anyone just for the sake of offending. But if someone happens to be offended by something I have written I can’t help that. And I still believe that anyone who has never been offended  by the remarks of others has never learned, and will never learn, anything.  We learn from those who challenge us more than those who only give us sweet talk.

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