As we close to the end of 2024, one of the most poignant stories that Albertans will remember is that 2024 was the year that Jasper burned.
We’ll also remember how amazing it was that Albertans joined in unity to help those in Jasper in their time of need. We are good at coming together to help those suffering from disasters, as we have proven in everything from the 2013 floods to the Fort McMurray and Slave Lake fires.
The Blame Game
But once the waters recede and the smoke clears, we want to blame someone. That just seems to be human nature. We need to make sense of what seems senseless.
We already reported on the social media firestorm that fanned the flames of blame after the Jasper fire. From conspiracy theories that Trudeau, the Liberals, and the “Wokeism” movement ‘created’ the fire to push forward a ‘climate scam’ agenda to those blaming Danielle Smith and the UCP for cutting firefighting funding in Alberta so there were not enough resources to fight the fire. Both arguments are based on misinformation and a desire to push a political agenda.
But that was just the beginning of the blaming. Another favourite narrative is that the feds were responsible for the firestorm for not dealing properly with the vast forest of tinder-dry, pine-beetle-killed trees, resulting in a fire much worse than having the park cut down all those trees in advance. Others blamed Alberta directly for pumping so much fossil fuel pollution into the atmosphere that every weather disaster across Canada seemed to be Alberta’s fault.
Of course, the truth is not so black-and-white but many shades of grey. However, social media does not deal well with nuance or complex issues. Everything needs to be boxed up in a pithy sound bite. Blaming others makes you look smart.
Blaming is a Distraction
It got so bad that the mayor of Jasper, Richard Ireland, well-known for his diplomacy and tact, finally weighed in on all the blaming.
“The present atmosphere of finger-pointing, blaming and misinformation is beyond merely an annoying distraction; it delays healing. It introduces fresh wounds at a time when we need recovery and unity.”
But Albertans aren’t the only ones pointing fingers and blaming. Instead of uniting us, the increased severity of disasters has people worldwide spreading misinformation, paranoia, lies and finger-pointing.
For instance, claims suggesting that Hurricane Milton, one of the most powerful storms in US history, was “engineered” and that the weather in Florida was being “manipulated” were spread widely on social media. In essence, the posts suggested that the US government is secretly controlling the weather to further its left-wing climate agenda. How the US government benefits from creating hurricanes that kill its citizens and cause billions in damage that it has to provide disaster relief for was never addressed, though.
So, rather than bringing us together to find solutions to increasingly worsening disasters, people are becoming increasingly polarized, selectively looking for information, factual or not, that confirms their existing confirmation bias (a person’s tendency to process information by looking for or interpreting information that is consistent with their existing beliefs).
This widening polarization keeps us from collaborating on solutions, like rebuilding Jasper or making Alberta more affordable.
So we continue daily, happily complaining online about who to blame for which disaster.
Or, maybe we can forget the blaming and start talking about building community solutions.
After all, no matter what political stripe we come from, we have far more in common than not.
Most Albertans want the same things, so let’s start working on our common interests and not concentrate on the niggly outliers that keep us apart.
Now that’s an Alberta we can get behind!
