It is hard to know where to start when discussing the transformation of the local newspaper, the Vernon Morning Star.
What was once a newsy, objective publication with opinions encouraged from all directions, has seemingly positioned itself in the growing chorus of self-appointed experts on the worldwide climate.
A day doesn’t go by that we aren’t chided and chastised for not prostrating ourselves at the altar of this angry green god — and an angry god it is.
We open the newspaper to see a near full page diatribe from the pompous fruit fly scientist David Suzuki, lecturing women that its up to them to quit having babies.
Most of us know the demographics in Europe and North America where new births do not keep up with deaths compared to India, the Middle East and Africa, where populations are exploding.
Mr. Suzuki knows full well his message falls on deaf ears where its actually needed, but he feeds his congregation a message which, like all fundamentalist religions, is based on faith rather than reality.
In a September editorial, we were challenged to question the facts as we were lectured on summer temperatures and the state of Arctic ice.
We know from personal experience that the Okanagan was warmer from May through September in the 1960s and fact checking will show the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada was 45 C in Saskatchewan in the 1940s.
The arrogance of the climate alarmists is in thinking that their brief blip in time on this planet is the most important and their actions alone can save the world.
The Morning Star editor references the latest assault on our intelligence, the angry 16-year-old from Sweden, Greta Thunberg.
In her screaming off-the-wall rants, this obviously afflicted child is seen by the eco-crowd as the new Joan of Arc with the knowledge and ability to kick the adults out of the room and run the whole thing herself.
If the Black Press editor is so sure of this child’s depth of knowledge and abilities, why not turn the fortunes of Black Press over to a Grade 7 class with full control of the purse strings?
The radical left has hijacked the weather as its latest assault on western civilization and the free market economy.
As I write this (in September), it is 10 C and raining, after one of the coolest and wettest summers in the past 40 years.
How’s that for an inconvenient truth?
John Trainor
Vernon