On Saturday, April 11, what promises to be the largest climate change demonstration in Canadian history will descend on Quebec City. The "Act on climate" march, organized by the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace and other activist groups, shows how the environmental movement has let climate campaigners take centre stage. This is unfortunate.
Reports such as those of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) reveal that there is anything but consensus in the scientific community about the causes of climate change. Yet protestors in Quebec will present the issue as being 'settled.' We know with virtual certainty, they will claim, that our carbon dioxide emissions will cause a planetary emergency unless we radically change our energy infrastructure. Anyone who questions this approach will be shunned as a 'denier.'
Independent of the NIPCC's findings, the confidence of climate campaigners is irrational. Uncertainty is inherent to all science, especially one as immature and complex as climate change. And considering what's at stake--a human-induced eco-collapse if demonstrators are correct, or, if skeptics are right, a loss of millions of jobs and a waste of trillions of dollars--properly assessing the probabilities of alternative scenarios is critically important to public policy decision making.
The consequences of overconfidence about our abilities to forecast, let alone control, future climate states is tragic. Even in countries that can least afford it, governments are yielding to activists and spending vast sums to reduce emissions and encourage 'green' energy sources. Rather than concentrating on activities they know will yield benefits--helping the poor adapt to natural climate variability and make good use of inexpensive fossil fuel resources--politicians trumpet speculative plans to regulate our planet's climate. Copying climate activists, they proclaim 'We must limit global warming to two degrees,' as if they had a global thermostat.
Consequently, of the $1 billion spent worldwide every day on climate finance, 94% goes to trying to control future climate (mitigation), according to the San Francisco-based Climate Policy Initiative.  Only 6% is dedicated to adaptation. We are valuing the security of people yet to be born more than those suffering today.
This might make sense if we were confident that human-caused climate Armageddon lay just ahead. Millions of people would be left to suffer and die today to save billions in the future.
But as the probability that a particular climate policy will significantly benefit future generations diminishes, today's adaptation to mitigation funding ratio makes less and less sense. Finally, if we knew that a human-induced climate crisis was not in the cards, then it would be easy to justify that no money be devoted to mitigation at all. Aside from 'no regrets' policies to conserve energy and reduce pollution where it is a problem, all climate finance could then be devoted to adaptation and funding basic research.
So, our leaders should be focused on trying to determine how likely it is that a man-made climate crisis lies ahead.
Certainly the provincial premiers meeting in Quebec City on April 14 have no idea since neither the provinces, nor the federal government, have ever convened open, unbiased hearings into the science. Consequently, the only agreement that should come out of the premiers' climate summit is an announcement that, at last, they will hold these investigations. Only then will they be able to perform the risk management exercises necessary to properly balance the known needs of those suffering today with the possible problems to be faced by future generations.
