Around the world, endgames are looming in four high-stakes political, environmental and military disputes. The results will resonate well beyond the immediate protagonists.

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Joe Oliver: Four critical endgames are looming that could change the world Back to video

Here at home, a Liberal government in its death throes is engaged in cringeworthy acts of desperation. The prime minister used his officials to publicly chastise his deputy PM for failing to prettify his economic and fiscal debacles. Then, predictably, he failed to persuade Mark Carney to board a foundering vessel with no lifeboats. Unless Trudeau jumps ship early to avoid electoral obliteration, long-suffering Canadians will have to wait 15 months for liberation from: high prices, unaffordable housing, profligate spending, rising taxes, massive deficits, intrusive regulations, divisive identity politics, alienating woke ideology, regional tensions, international humiliation and the absence of moral leadership. Whenever exactly he takes over, Pierre Poilievre will face a monumental task to undo the damage.

Extraordinary events in the U.S. have culminated in an intensely polarized presidential race. On the Democratic left, a west-coast liberal has morphed overnight from an ineffective and unpopular vice president into a charismatic combination of Obama and Demosthenes. On the Republican right, the sui generis MAGA populist triumphantly escaped an assassination attempt and may yet evade the weaponization of the justice system, if only on appeal. Despite what those afflicted with Trump derangement syndrome claim, America’s democracy probably is not on the line. But a great deal is in play.

Compared to a Kamala Harris presidency, a Trump second term would bring: lower corporate and personal taxes; less intrusive regulation; a tougher stance on crime; better border control; more deportation of undocumented aliens; additional conservative appointments to the Supreme Court; a stronger military; a more muscular reaction to Iranian terrorism and nuclear development; a more robust response to Chinese provocations and higher tariffs on imports. It would also bring a firm rejection of wokism, DEI, intersectionality and critical race theory, as well as a retreat from green subsidies and enthusiastic promotion of oil and gas development.

In about one third of the mainly western world, governments are spending trillions of dollars to reduce reliance on the fossil fuels that, they fervently believe, cause climate warming that poses an existential threat to humanity. But climate catastrophism is now confronting three critical challenges.

First, voters are rebelling against the crushing financial burden of green policies, and that is causing politicians to backtrack, especially with the remaining two-thirds of countries unapologetically using oil, gas and coal to generate affordable energy and economic growth. Second, partly as a result, global emissions reached record levels last year — which suggests net zero by 2050 is virtually unattainable. Third, historical data and real world events do not support the scare tactics used by alarmists in government and the mainstream media.

Recency bias and mainstream media scaremongering have persuaded many of us that this summer’s heat waves are unprecedented. But compared to last month’s 33C, Toronto’s highest temperature was 41C in 1936, although 1911 came close at 39C. In total, 89 individual years since records began in 1841 have recorded a higher temperature than this year. Other Canadian cities show comparable numbers.

As Bjorn Lomborg pointed out in The Wall Street Journal last week, contrary to conventional wisdom, the number of polar bears has more than doubled since the 1960s, the Australian Great Barrier Reef had record coral cover this year, small Pacific islands are stable or increasing in size, while moderate and extreme heat killed fewer than 10,000 people this year — a 10 per cent decline over the decade — compared to 152,000 who died from moderate and extreme cold. Eventually, people will recognize that human flourishing depends on a fact-based, data-driven approach to climate change rather than group-think and virtue signalling.

Israel, the world’s only nation-state threatened by genuinely genocidal terrorism, is being attacked on multiple fronts by Iran and its proxies. While many countries claim to support Israel’s right to self-defence, they reflexively condemn it for civilian casualties that, while certainly tragic, are inevitable as it does defend its sovereignty and protect its citizens. A global double standard demands “proportionality” in response to a murderous invasion and kidnappings by Hamas, over 20,000 rockets fired by Hezbollah and 300 missiles and drones launched by Iran. Because national suicide is not an option, while a regional apocalypse is unthinkable, intermittent conflict will continue until Israel either vanquishes its implacable enemies, achieves a durable peace with willing neighbours, or both.

As the next few months extend into years, these four confrontations will transform politics, culture, economics and security, both here at home and also around our troubled globe.

Joe Oliver was minister of natural resources and then of finance in the Harper government.