Yes, we're doomed.

Although western Canadians (and much of my own family) are probably looking at last night's election as some kind of personal slight on Alberta, an apocalypse even, I think it's a lot more helpful to see what happened last night as a referendum on the extent to which Canadians believe in the reality and severity of global warming.

On this front, Alberta and Saskatchewan are going to be OK. 2/3 of Canadians voted for parties who either pay lip service to global warming while ignoring their own government's 5 year old emission reduction targets (the Conservatives) or who loudly proclaim that global warming is real, while spending more money on oil and gas development and pipelines than any federal government in history and tinker around the edges in ways that fall far short of our Paris accord targets. Moreover, if there were any serious worries by anyone that the Trans Mountain pipeline would be scrapped, those worries should have been put to rest. It will be built.

As for the other 1/3, those who might feel on a sliding scale that global warming is the central existential issue of our age, things are pretty bad. Although we were all fantasizing last night about some kind of minority where the NDP or Greens held the of balance of power, the size of the liberal minority, and the fear of another election means that although the carbon tax will stay, it will be far easier for the the Liberals to govern with the consent of the Conservatives more often than not, than to constantly be attempting to cobble together a more radically left wing political program, especially given that on most economic and foreign policy issues, the liberals and the conservatives are far closer to each other than they are to the nominally left wing parties. And far from the BQ being some kind of spoiler, I suspect it is Quebec that will be ignored when it comes to issues that they care about (like global warming).

This isn't to say that many Westerners (pace BC of course) won't remain completely unhinged from reality, from settled scientific discourse, or from the positions of their own ruling class (the oil and gas industry) but as someone with a lot of family there, I thought it important, after an acrimonious election, to point out that they won a lot more than they lost, even if the colour of the winners isn't the one that they liked best.