The Editor,
In her comprehensive overview of the climate debacle (Letter to The Editor, “Global warming ‘not a two-sided story,’” Sept. 30 to Oct. 6), Ms. Halpin makes a number of dogmatic assertions that reiterate the worn and panic-driven narrative the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would like us to accept, neglecting the fact that governments have other agendas, and taking no notice of the financial fortunes accrued by the weather prophets. Ms. Halpin surprisingly states that Canada’s 1.6 per cent contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions “means little,” a disconcerting response that discounts the nation’s relative success in this matter and which indirectly sanctions the razing of the energy sector by the Liberal government, along with the continuation of an unnecessary carbon tax. While a global perspective is significant, if not necessary, it is of equal importance that we survive economically as a country, with the standard of living that we have strived to maintain. The writer’s smug appraisal of contrary observations (from the “other side” — the “deniers” and the “skeptics” as they are referred to) as “personal opinion, biases and unsubstantiated claims” that should not “be given equal weight” in the press here, in fact completes a two-sided story: the dismantling of objectivity and freedom of speech, and the dismantling of oil and gas production. But perhaps they are the same story, a one-sided story after all. We here are drifting dangerously toward a totalitarian state, more disturbing than a hot planet.
Mike Scapillato
Chelsea, QC