The climate apocalypse is fast approaching. That’s the word from federal government scientists who Monday issued an alarming report on climate change in Canada.

They say that even in the unlikely event that the world meets its global carbon emission targets Canada is at high risk of extreme temperatures, drought and flooding.

They calculate that since 1948, mean temperatures in Canada have increased by more than double the world average.

Yet so far the report has elicited a ho-hum response. The country’s political class remains consumed with the Jody Wilson-Raybould saga, a political scandal in which little scandalous has occurred.

The opposition Conservatives, joined by like-minded governments in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick, attack Justin Trudeau’s Liberals for imposing a carbon tax to deal with the global warming problem.

But they offer nothing plausible in its stead. Ontario Premier Doug Ford argues that he doesn’t need to do anything to reduce carbon emissions — that the decision of a previous government to shut down the province’s coal-fired electricity generating plants was sufficient.

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Federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, another vociferous critic of carbon taxes, says he’ll come up with ideas of his own — eventually.

If the Tories were serious about climate change, they wouldn’t criticize Trudeau for doing too much. They would attack him for doing too little.

By the federal government’s own reckoning, it is not on course to meet even the minimalist carbon emission targets it agreed to in Paris in 2015.

But perhaps the most bizarre distraction from the serious business of climate change is the fascination with every twist and turn of the Wilson-Raybould story.

I say bizarre because ultimately, this is a story in which nothing much happened.

Last fall, Wilson-Raybould was pressed by those around the prime minister to consider offering a form of plea bargain to SNC-Lavalin, a Quebec engineering firm under indictment for bribery. She demurred and eventually was shifted to another portfolio before quitting cabinet entirely.

But SNC-Lavalin still faces criminal charges and remains without a plea bargain. On the substantive issue, nothing has changed.

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Still, the story rages along. A Commons committee investigates and then, when matters get too hot for the Liberal majority, calls the inquiry off.

From time to time, Wilson-Raybould and her ally, former treasury board president Jane Philpott, pop up to do no-information media interviews.

One week, we hear that Wilson-Raybould is releasing more details about this business. The next week we read that in order to counter her, Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s former principal secretary, has done the same.

Wilson-Raybould releases an audio recording of her December 2018 conversation with former top bureaucrat Michael Wernick. Although the tape contains no additional information, it immediately gives the story new life.

Was it legal for her to tape the conversation without Wernick’s knowledge? (Answer: almost certainly yes). Was it proper? (Answer: almost certainly no).

As I write this, television is reporting breathlessly that Wilson-Raybould is appealing to her fellow Liberal MPs not to kick her out of caucus even though she has said she has no confidence in Trudeau’s government.

Will she succeed? Will feminist Trudeau have the nerve to oust a high-profile Indigenous woman from the government benches?

Stay tuned. The soap opera continues.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, climate change rolls along. The federal report predicts that if carbon emission growth continues unabated, sea levels on the east coast will rise by as much as one metre. In the St. Lawrence basin, water levels are predicted to rise half a metre.

Under the same scenario, the scientists report with medium confidence that, by 2100, periods of drought will become more frequent in the Prairies and the British Columbia interior.

This is the grim future Canada faces. If we paid more attention to it and less to every twist and turn in the admittedly entertaining Wilson-Raybould story, we might be able to better deal with what’s coming.

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