Recently I wrote about our Canadian Universal Health Care system in which I stated that I think we need to adopt some financial way of bringing individual responsibility for our health to each of us. I suggest that there be some system of financial rewards and punishments that allow people the choice to live in any way they like but have to pay a larger premium for living a life that will more likely lead to the need for expensive health treatments in the future. Choices like how much you eat, whether you smoke, and whether you exercise. I still think there is merit to the idea and worthy of adoption, but this notion of personal responsibility should be extended to beyond health care.

A life-long friend of mine and I are about as far apart on the political spectrum as it is possible to be, me firmly on the "left" and he on the "right"; at the political level, he'd rather cut his own throat than vote for an NDP candidate and I'm usually heard to express similar comments regarding the Conservative party in whatever particular moniker they choose to use. But the truth of the matter is that we both agree on most issues far more than we disagree, we simply have a different way of expressing it.

Take climate change, as an example, we both agree that there is climate change going on. We both agree that climate change always has and always will occur as long as there is an earth. We both agree that there is every reason to distrust everything we see and hear as it is all filtered in various ways and that is just as true for the supposed science of climate change as it is for the science of the tar sands. And we both agree that whether or not our addiction to hydrocarbons is related to the seemingly obvious changes in climate we are seeing or indeed even believe that there is anything significant happening climate-wise, that our current excess within Canada and the US is not sustainable if adopted by the world as a whole. It simply can't be done, there isn't enough oil to do it.

It is usually at this point that we get into trouble because if I'm honest, although at least compared to my peers, I live a very low carbon-footprint sort of life, it is still hundreds of times greater than 5.5 billion others. I'm not sure how much more I want to give up right now, we are down to 1 car but we won't be giving that up; we have a small century home that may not be the best insulated house in existence but we are staying just the same; I actively try to not acquire new things, but I had to throw out hundreds (maybe thousands) of pounds of stuff before we moved to our new house. We do own and use our own grocery bags and we did so well before the 5-cent charge, we have and use the programmable thermostat, we use the energy efficient bulbs where possible even though Sue hates the light (no matter the frequency), we only produce 1 green garbage bag a week for the five of us, composting, recycling and paying attention to packaging helps. We could still do more for sure but we are definitely already on the lower-end of the scale.

But even if all of North America adopted our behaviour it still wouldn't even be close to sustainable for the entire world or even a significant proportion thereof. We either have to find even cheaper energy than oil, make much greater personal cuts than I describe above, or admit that we aren't going to play fair. The problem is that wanting to find cheaper energy doesn't have anything to do with whether there is cheaper energy to be had. There are still three choices, but one is simply deception.

While those are entirely my words I feel confident that we would agree on virtually 100% of that, it would just take us a while to get there. It is our response to these truths that we start to differ greatly. I want us to deal with what I do believe are the underlying causes of climate change because I truly do believe we are dangling on a precipice. My friend sees most of the activity surrounding "dealing with it", like carbon cap and trade, as just more ways to fleece the public. I actually agree with him on the cap-and-trade but point out that without changing the rest of the world, it is only through a financial penalty felt by individuals that we will see real change. I'd favour a carbon tax but I'd think just stopping the subsidization of big oil would be a good start. My friend is pretty honest about it, he doesn't want to spend more money, he doesn't want to change his life and (right or wrong) he doesn't believe he is going to have to.

Only time will tell whether he is right, I believe there are enough people who think like him to stifle any real change in any case so I am sure the thesis will be tested in our lifetime. It is kinda weird watching it happen like some sort of unstoppable slow-motion replay, I feel much sorrier for my children than I do for myself, I wish I could stop it from happening.