Right now, Quebecers, like their fellow Canadians, are in the throes of a federal election campaign that will probably hinge on who is the best leader to guide us through the existential crisis unleashed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Tariffs have raised prices on everyday goods and volatile markets have played havoc with people’s nest eggs. Some fear for their jobs, while nearly everyone is worried about a recession. And in the background, Trump’s threats to make Canada the 51st state have added a whole new layer of dread.

This is a crisis, there is no disputing it. And it’s only natural voters are looking for a prime minister who can steer through these stormy seas or offer up policies that might relieve the pain, economic or otherwise, if not neutralize the blow.

But amid all this turmoil we’ve forgotten the real existential emergency that is banging on our door. The one that was here long before Trump took office for the first or second time, the one that could unleash the same kind of economic and social mayhem as the president, the one some denied and many ignored for decades, but that we seemed to have finally woken up to at the 11th hour.

Climate change, that inconvenient truth, seems to have fallen off the radar as Trump torches the global economy.

Never mind that it flooded countless basements when the remnants of a hurricane doused Montreal last August or had us choking on smoke plumes the previous summer as the forests of northern Quebec burned. And those are just the local effects.

Never mind that temperature records have been shattered, making last year, like the one before that and the one before that, the hottest on record. Never mind that we will soon run out of time to keep global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, as pledged by the Paris Agreement.

This Earth Day, the climate crisis isn’t just taking a back seat to other urgent priorities, we’re literally backtracking on the halting progress that has been made.

It’s of course easy to point the finger at Trump, who withdrew the United States from climate agreements, among many other outrageous moves.

But campaigning Canadian leaders are walking........

© Montreal Gazette