Canada

Canada, which played a leading role in setting the 1.5-degree warming target, was the world’s fifth largest oil producer at the time, and today we have moved up to fourth; we have nearly doubled our oil production since 2010 and continue to expand that production faster than any country on earth except the United States, all while grandiose statements about decarbonization emanate regularly from the federal Liberals<

This right here tells you all you need to know about Canada's true stance on climate change.

Vaclav Smile knows his stuff. I've read a few of his popculture oriented books (Making the Modern World, etc.). He is coherent, relatively unbiased, and well researched. When he speaks, important people usually listen. For example: I learned about him because Bill Gates recommended his books...

Also, as a tangent: I suspect that the photo in the article was taken at the Leaf Botanical Gardens in Winnipeg. Half the city has a profile photo taken in those gardens. Great backdrops there haha. E: whoops, it's at the predecessor to the Leaf, which is now decommissioned...

This extended throughout the Q&A period, when a number of people asked him, in vain, to name something positive they or the government could do, some tiny example of something that had gone right, or could. It became, for me, a sad act.

The man is just too curmudgeon to be helpful at this point, just forget about him already.

On the one hand, you've got people hand waving the feasibility of "magic eco solutions" like scalable carbon capture and "solar freaking roadways", on the other end of the spectrum, you've got Smil, and the EVs-are-not-the-solution crowd who are, ironically, hand waving the feasibility of convincing people to suffer a little more now so we probably (?) won't suffer more later.

I agree with the sentiment that the reality is somewhere between two extremes. But in failing to acknowledge the social problem around convincing people to intentionally suffer (because we're stuck in a productivity arms race perpetuated by a little "eco-MAD" doctrine and some prisoner's dilemma for good measure), puts Smile's view itself in a bit of an "extremist" spot.

It doesn't matter a lick of difference if 98% of everyone is a goody two-shoes and consumed "responsibly" if the other 2% is sweeping the problem under the rug unbeknownst to the 98%. 100% responsibility may be just as unfeasible as scalable carbon capture.

Interesting article, and though long, well worth the read.

It's unfortunate to see someone fall down into negativity like that. I imagine decades of warnings he was outlining as clearly as possible falling onto dead ears would jade someone, and perhaps he's got the view that it isn't his life that will be impacted? It would be easy to distance yourself that way from it, and might explain his recalcitrance