Climate change affects every aspect of day-to-day life and sweeping reform is needed urgently, according to more than 7,000 citizens across the country, including Newmarket, who took part in grassroots town halls last spring.
“We are in a climate crisis,” Greenpeace Canada climate and energy campaigner Mike Hudema said in a statement on the results that sprang from the more than 150 locally organized town halls. “From heat waves, to wildfires to flooding, we are facing them in Canada and abroad. Fighting climate change needs a holistic and solid plan that urgently responds to the multiple crises we face.”
The nationwide initiative known as the Pact for Green New Deal involves a non-partisan coalition of citizens concerned about climate change who share a passion to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect biodiversity, rise to the challenges that climate change increasingly presents, and create more than one million jobs in the process, Hudema said.
“Current government plans are well below what is needed and only increased ambition and holistic change can get us where we need to be to keep our communities and country safe,” he said. “And we have 11 years to do it.”
Here in Newmarket, the fledgling environmental group Drawdown Newmarket-Aurora organized the May 29 Pact for a Green New Deal town hall at Old Town Hall to a standing-room only crowd of about 130 citizens.
“The Green New Deal event brought us more new members. We now total 71,” said co-founder Teresa Porter. “We have formed three working sub-committees to work on hosting an all-candidates meeting (for the October 2019 federal election), to draft a declaration to (Newmarket) council to declare a climate emergency, and to encourage public outreach with kitchen-table discussions.”
The Green New Deal for Canada is a work in progress and will be updated again this fall to include the results from town halls that are still taking place across the country.
Here are some highlights of what citizens would like to see Canada do more and less of to address climate change, courtesy of Greenpeace Canada:
100 per cent renewable energy by 2040
- Phase out fossil fuels by 2040
- Halt all new fossil fuel development
- Shift fossil fuel subsidies to green new energy
Build clean industries
- One million green jobs
- Create a plan for one million good green jobs
- Ensure every oil and gas worker that wants a job gets one
Cut plastics
- Ban all unnecessary single-use plastic items
- Legislate against excessive plastic packaging
Climate justice
- Include and put marginalized communities first
- Enshrine Indigenous rights
- Implement proportional representation
- Ensure that Canada pays its fair share of the climate debt
Protect life coast to coast to coast
- Grant personhood protections to forests and bodies of water
- Create an environmental bill of rights
- Protect at least 30 per cent of land, freshwater and ocean by 2030
A better life for all
- Provide safe affordable and energy-efficient buildings and homes
- Free tuition and universal pharma, dental and child care
- Produce healthy, sustainable and organic foods (pesticide-free)
- Build vast networks of sustainable free public transportation
For more information on the Pact for a Green New Deal results, visit here.
For more information on Drawdown Newmarket-Aurora, visit Facebook.
