Who is Going to Pay for This?

The big question in Alberta now is; “Who is Going to Pay for This?” and of course no one in their beloved Alberta petrochemical industry wants to take responsibility for climate change and the costs of flooding.  The rational is that the massive flooding was entirely caused by Mother Nature and late spring runoff, not in any way by Big Oil.  One ironic quote was “Fortunately the oil sands were not hit with this flooding.”  At some point we as consumers need to start forcing government to make the polluters and climate change initiators pay the real social and environmental costs of carbon fuel or we as a society will simply go broke on top of dealing with 200 year flooding every few years.  Because the answer to “who is going to pay for all this?” is,…. and get ready, you already know the answer……..yes, it is you and me.

We get the bill, we get to pay for all this as taxpayers, we get to pay for all this as insurance buyers, we pay for all this as small business owners and we do this while the people who are causing the climate change continue to get development grants and government assistance to ‘build the economy!’   Whose economy is being built and at what cost?  Who is Going to Pay for This?