Albertan with a PhD in resource economics here:
we are paying for the climate-change denial of previous governments and senoior advisers/strategists. 

Anyone with an education level higher than grade 6 understood the science behind global warming and should have seen the writing on the wall during the turn of the millenium (=unsustainable oil industry, we should have divested and moved investments to renewable energy like solar, geothermal, biomass).

We (=generation X and older) made poor political choices and now we have to start the painful transition towards a more sustainable economy, a transition that needs CO2 taxes and economic incentives towards more resource-efficient technology.