Some people believe the cat litter rumour but not facts on climate change

The Editor, I have to admit I have always enjoyed the “From the Other Side” columns which have always been either quite funny or extremely poignant, depending on the subject matter. The latest column, however, was neither, since it was focused on the preposterous rumour-which many people apparently accepted as fact--that schools were putting litter boxes in their washrooms to accommodate children who self-identified as cats. At first it seems humourous, but when you become aware of the number of people who actually believed this nonsense, it becomes very disturbing.

What’s so troubling is that this is so indicative of the war that’s currently being waged on truth. The folks who are so quick to believe in school litter boxes are often the same people who have been convinced that Climate Change is a myth and that there’s actually a huge debate raging amongst climate scientists about whether or not it even exists. (There is no debate, because 97% of the scientific community is convinced that it’s real and there’s really only a tiny handful of outliers.)

Some of us seem to have lost the ability to think critically, because as I write this there are over 400 wildfires burning in Canada, more than 200 of which are out-of-control.

The air quality in Ottawa is actually worse than the air quality in Mexico City or Shanghai, which should be a wakeup call to everyone. The status quo may be working very well for the shareholders of ExxonMobil, but not so much for those of us who would like to pass on a habitable world to the grandkids. The harsh reality is that we cannot continue to dump 37 billion tons of C02 into the atmosphere annually with zero negative consequences, which is what Climate Change deniers apparently believe. Needless to say, that may be the craziest theory of all!

But that’s where we’re at, living in a world where no one lets the facts interfere with a juicy conspiracy theory if it can be sold to an unthinking public. I sincerely hope there are still enough informed people in this country who understand that we simply cannot continue to treat the atmosphere like a huge