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Re: Letter to the editor, What qualifies as an emergency in Newmarket, Jan. 20, and Article, Newmarket council declares climate emergency, Jan. 14.
Donna Buchanan’s letter started off well, when she pointed out that shelter, food and security are basic needs we have to attend to. She goes into detail on them, and rightly so. These are all concerns of ours as well.
But to refer to the climate emergency resolution passed recently by Newmarket Council as “virtue signalling” is just wrong. That is bullying, shaming language meant to get people one disagrees with to sit down and shut up. It has no place in any reasoned discussion.
She asks whether councillors “thought this (climate emergency declaration) through”. The mayor and at least a few councillors did, in fact, think it through, researching what other municipalities have done and consulting with local climate activists such as myself.
At the end of her letter, Ms Buchanan wonders what the declaration will cost business. She refers to carbon taxation, which is simply a way to have businesses and individuals begin to pay a small part of the cost of burning fossil fuels; and red tape, which is simply to protect citizens from the excesses of unregulated business practices, to hold them accountable, and to encourage them to act responsibly.
So Ms Buchanan is right in her valuing of shelter, food and security, but here is why, at the core of her argument against declaring a climate emergency, she is wrong: Tackling the climate crisis is not optional, and doing so can improve all the concerns she has highlighted.
A focus on the climate emergency can result in stronger, more energy-efficient and flood-resistant housing, which will make housing more affordable and lower insurance costs. It can result in healthy, local foods being more available. It can result in more secure, local employment in industries that have a future.
There is, in fact, no greater threat than climate change — or global heating as it may be called. Globally, if we continue our business as usual — and Canadians are among the very worst climate polluters — we (or, at my age, more likely our children and grandchildren) will lose everything. Everything. There will be no housing security, no food security and certainly no personal security.
The sad fact is that the senior levels of government all over the world have put this off far too long. In the face of that inaction, municipalities all over the world have stepped up, have declared, in the words of one Newmarket councillor: “If not us, then who?” Newmarket’s declaration of a climate emergency, and similar declarations in York Region, and elsewhere in Ontario, in Canada and the rest of the world, form an important part of that movement.
So please, Ms Buchanan, support us in this important effort. Our concerns have much in common.
David Kempton, Newmarket
