by LOU MAZE
RMG Humour Writer
If we are ever going to get Canadians motivated to take action against Climate Change, we need to stop calling it Global Warming.
Global Warming sounds like a big motherly hug, made of pure sunshine. Every Canadian that hears this expression, secretly thinks, “Yipee, let’s burn our long underwear and run through a sprinkler.”
We are not heartless. We love polar bears. We don’t want the icebergs to melt and flood all those sunny little islands. But we’re tired of the cold. That’s why those of us who can, migrate southward for the winter and those of us who can’t, stay home and hate them.
We get a grim sort of satisfaction when it snows in sunny locales. Those balmy places, where folks are lounging around in shorts and flip flops, their mouths agape and not a clue how to operate a snow shovel or even what one looks like.. I really shouldn’t pick on the west coast, since they don’t really live in Canada. Any place that counts flowers in February, is more like “Canada Lite.” than the real thing.
We hear the statistics that tell us the average temperature has gone up a degree or two but this is hardly the kind of spike that restores feeling to your fingers or thaws out the pipes. If the planet turned upside down so the tropics could shift a little closer to the 49th, we probably wouldn’t mind, as long as we thought everyone could hang on for a bit.
But when you stop talking Global Warming and start calling it Climate Change, Canadians get it. The weather is not odd, it’s freaky, as though mother nature were on an extended acid trip.
We used to be able to make broad predictions about the weather. If we had a mild winter, the one that followed would probably beat our brains out. You might call it weather Karma. A lousy summer, meant winter might be merciful. The whim was always with the winter but there was the hope of justice.
Now the weather has gone “wonky” and none of us know what’s happening next. We could be treading water in our living rooms, or growing pineapples off the back deck.
Recently a local told me that a bear got into his garbage. An unexpected fluke in November, but in December, it’s downright bizarre and now even the bears know, the climate is changing.
