Why can't we have a grown-up conversation about climate change?

The national conversation on climate change has been poisoned by finger pointing, regional resentments and empty promises — so much so that at a time when a devastating disaster has ravaged an oil town, raising the issue of climate change and carbon emissions is very fraught. 

There have been those who can't resist suggesting Fort McMurray's residents, forced to flee their city by a merciless fire, brought this disaster on themselves by working in an industry that's become synonymous with climate change.

Then there have been those who've branded anyone who ponders whether climate change was a factor in this fire as insensitive, anti-Alberta or an eco-fanatic. 

Behind it all is a deep division between those who say abandoning fossil fuels will save us, those who say it will destroy our standard of living, and those who argue we can beat back climate change and keep digging oil, gas and bitumen out of the ground.

I think the big mistake that the environmental community has made is in pointing fingers and refusing to create a narrative that recognizes that when we started building out the oil sands fifty years ago...we didn't know what we know today. And when those engineers studied and those boilermakers studied and got those jobs, they didn't know what we know today. Now we know. So what are we going to do together?- Tzeporah Berman

Michael spoke to Tzeporah Berman, one of Canada's most prominent environmentalists, and Bruce Pardy, a law professor at Queen's University who specializes in environmental and property law, about the Fort McMurray fire, the Leap Manifesto, and how to have a conversation about climate change that is simultaneously intellectually honest, economically responsible, and politically possible. 

So much of climate policy is purely symbolic. It's a facade. The 1.5 [temperature increase limit] at the Paris talks — it's in the agreement, but the national contributions don't add up to 1.5, they add up to something close to 3 degrees. It is all symbolic...There's no prospect, based upon the numbers, that the Paris deal will limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees, in spite of all of the agreement that that's what the goal should be.- Bruce Pardy