That is all.
This appeared as part of my weekly column. Not 100 per cent happy with it, but it gives you an idea of how much free reign we have to fill that space when our turn hits.
-----It's snowing outside as I write this.
Not much. Maybe four centimetres by tomorrow, and I got my snow tires on at the last minute on Saturday, so I'm good. It's really not all that bad out. Almost nothing by Maritime standards.
But there'll be more. Oh, yes. There will be more.
We got off easy last year. It barely went below zero, and we got, like, two snowfalls, none major. It was like a holiday, and was awesome for that very reason.
Not this year, though. Having grown up in Brazil and subtropical Africa, my snow-sense is a little stunted, but I'm pretty sure we won't be so lucky this time.
Now, they say you can't control the weather. And for thousands of years, that was true. Mankind existed at the inscrutible mercy of thousands of imaginary gods keen on wiping us all out in horrific and creative ways involving everything from glaciers to molten lava to Europop.
But it's not true anymore. Friends and neighbours, we hold in our own hands the power to deliver ourselves from our yearly prison of snow and ice, and into a world where minus 5C is considered unacceptably cold.
I'm talking about global warming.
Yes, global warming, or climate change, or whatever it's called now. The science is supposedly solid, but most politicians either think it's some kind of Greenpeace plot, or claim to want to fight it, by using legislation that seems to have a nasty habit of "accidentally" falling down the parliamentary stairs before it can go anywhere.
Now, the earth goes through heating and cooling cycles and we're about due for another warm-up anyway, but with the amount of rubbish six and a half billion of us pump into the atmosphere every time we get up and drive to work in the morning is so staggering, to say nothing of the factories churning out the useless junk we spend our dwindling paycheques on, there's no possible way we aren't having an effect.
We better be having an effect. 'Cos it's the only way to save us from another Maritime winter.
Friends, Canadians, countrymen, whatever you're doing to make global warming worse ... I want you to do more of it.
Seriously. We need to turbocharge this climate change stuff. We need to screw up earth's weather patterns so bad, by the time the effects hit us, Americans will start flying north for the winter.
Sure, some scientists say, due to the laws of nature being so screwy anyway, the result might actually be apocalyptically cooler winters, which would be worse than warmer ones. Scientists say a lot of things, often backed up by fact-based, analytical, easily verified and peer reviewed science.
But because their scientific findings contrast with my anti-winter agenda (not to mention the fact we liberal arts majors never trusted those shifty whitecoats), I'm going to completely and arbitrarily ignore the research and insist global warming means warmer winters, 'cos that's what I want, darn it.
You've seen the effects. You remember last winter. It was a season-long Indian summer, sparing us the 60-centimetre blizzards that are to us what roosters are to farmers.
Yes, yes, I know what those environmentalists and scientists are saying about agricultural collapse, the worldwide famines and the sea levels rising.
Sure, meteorological mayhem will upset the balance so badly our ecology will die a dozen species a day, and our economy will collapse one building block at a time, while we stand around pretending we have no idea why.
They're probably right about all of those things and, as the snow flakes drift down outside and I'm facing a season-long ordeal of trying to drive home in this mess, in the certain knowledge that this is only the beginning of our collective national nightmare, I don't care.
It's really not even that bad out, and already I'm prepared to build a giant altar and sacrifice Canada's lucrative winter sports industry on it. Most hockey is played indoors anyway, so we can keep the indoor rinks. As the centuries of balmy winters pass, it'll become like cricket: played the way it is because it always has been, even if no one can remember why.
We might even be able to get folks to move up to the northern territories, if they can stand the crazy day/night cycle. Economic development's a great thing, right? We won't be annihilating our economy and displacing our society so much as moving it north. Economists say that, so it must be right?
So Alberta oil sands, with your gushing black stuff and toxic tailings ponds?
Captains of industry, with your nightmares of true-cost economics?
Consumers and drivers, with your wasteful idling and lust for useless plastics?
Yeah. Crank it, lads. Let's make this happen, and fast. 'Cos, as I'm wrapping this up, it's still snowing outside.
