Battling global warming leads to fewer mental health beds
Now, it's practical politics in Alberta.
On Wednesday, the province announced $2 billion would be spent to pump the carbon dioxide byproduct of electrical generation and oilsands plants into depleted oil reservoirs. There, it would rest for eternity instead of warming the atmosphere, melting the ice caps, drowning the polar bears and raising sea levels.
In 2108, they will thank us in Bangladesh.
On Thursday, the story broke that, for want of $150 million, the mental health wing of the new South Hospital would be delayed. It is hardly over-the-top to suggest that as a consequence, some Albertans who might otherwise have lived will end up dead by 2018 .
Behold the 21st-century equivalent of the 20th century's guns-or-butter dilemma.
What's smart?
After all, this is just the start. If the supposed IPCC consensus of 1,700 scientists on climate change is really going to inform public policy, there will be a lot more diversion of money from present useful consumption to things aimed at hard-to-predict results, distant in time and place.
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1 comment:
The assumption is that, if that $2 billion wasn't being slated for the war against carbon, it would instead be spent on things like hospital wards. It sounds good, but unfortunately, isn't likely. Governments have this terrible having of finding all sorts of funds for current pet projects, but pleading poverty for unsexy things like hospitals, infrastructure, etc. That $2 billion would never have gone to anything as mundane as a hospital ward.
Yeah, cynical. I know.
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