From Mother Nature’s perspective, the results of next week’s election are largely irrelevant — and that should worry us.

The two main contenders, as well as the NDP, are just proposing slightly different variants of business as usual.

Their focus is on more economic growth, more resource extraction and consumption and — although not formally part of their platforms — more resultant pollution. All they really differ on is how the spoils will be divided between public and private sectors.

In fact, the environment, including climate change, has pretty much fallen off the public and political agenda.

CBC News recently reported that in 2021, 24 per cent named the environment as their most important issue. But in this campaign, the environment is eighth on the list, at about five per cent.

This has enabled governments in Ottawa and B.C. to back off from carbon pricing, having failed to vigorously defend it in the face of a powerful fossil-fuel lobby.

So we have lost an effective tool to reduce fossil-fuel consumption, at the expense of the wellbeing of future generations and myriad other species. The fossil-fuel........

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