The Economist magazine joins others wondering if record flooding in Alberta will cause that province and the Harper government to take climate change seriously.

An article posted on the British magazine's website cites a widely-read recent piece in The Tyee by Andrew Nikiforuk that posed that question. The Economist goes on to comment:

"Large financial demands on the treasury have a way of focusing government attention in a way that lobbying does not. If the final bill for the Alberta floods is eye-watering, it may yet chivvy the government into a more active policy against climate change. But that is some way off. In the meantime, while the causes of Alberta's floods remain a source of debate, their devastating results are all too clear."

Notes the Economist:

"One of the most divisive debates in Canada during the seven and a half years that Stephen Harper has been prime minister has been about climate change. It has pitted Mr. Harper's Conservative government and the country's oil industry against the New Democrat and Liberal opposition parties and environmentalists, who mourn Canada's exit from the Kyoto protocol and advocate stronger measures to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions."

David Beers is editor of The Tyee.