Article content continued

All this stuff is going to get tougher and tougher and tougher for every society

“If you don’t believe that’s a process you have to go through, if you just think, oh, forget about Alberta and Saskatchewan, forget about the energy-producing provinces because the mortal threat is so great we just read out a whole constituency of our country from consideration, you get away from democracy,” said Ignatieff, who in addition to his brief political career as leader of the federal Liberals in opposition from 2008 and 2011, is also an author, a public intellectual, a professor of international politics and is currently rector and President of Central European University.

“All this stuff is going to get tougher and tougher and tougher for every society but if you don’t believe that it’s in democracy that we adjudicate those conflicts and everyone gets less than they want, we’ll blow the place up.”

Ignatieff said that while many climate activists treat the issue as one that transcends politics, the political system is in fact vital to balancing a country’s conflicting priorities.

“It has to take it slowly and it has to engage in a whole set of hypocrisies, like we can both pump gas and get to carbon neutrality. The levels of hypocrisy about this in Canada in the democratic system are sickening but it is the necessary hypocrisy of a society trying to hold itself together in the middle of the biggest energy transition in the history of the country.”