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It may be, just may be, that the common folk of all our continents, were just not convinced (a) that we really were in peril, or (b) that despite the revelation from Paris that we have averted planetary collapse, have not received that revelation with the confidence and credulity that those who stitched together the accord plainly do exhibit for their mighty endeavours.

Either way, for the “single most important challenge facing the world,” it’s an astonishingly tepid response from all the saved. Could it be that statements from 195 world leaders — among whom, for example, is Robert Mugabe, just to hint at the quality of some of those leaders in whom the UN reposes such trust and faith — do not carry the persuasive force, the power of reassurance, that the delegates blithely assumed they have?

Or maybe something else is at work. Maybe there are some worrywarts who feel that more tractable problems, problems at the scale of communities and provinces, are being and have been ignored while the search for the grail of a stable climate occupies more grand minds. Where is the urgency to relieve some other challenges that are actually facing us right now? It’s all very fine to sort out how the world will be in 2100, but what about, say, St. John’s, or Calgary, or Ottawa even in the next six months or a year?

We’re never going to have a summit on it, but there are jobs being shed by the thousands out west. A whole industry that fired a good part of the Canadian economy and supplied the taxes that feed our social programs, kept people in jobs, contributed to equalization payments — and, yes, even to the $2.5 billion we are now going to courier off to the global climate fund — is in free fall.