Beyond time to nourish new attitudes

My friend Susan says, I don't get it. Maybe voters don't care, most just want lower taxes, cheap food, to live for today. But some of us have grandchildren we say we love. What will their world be like if all we want is lower taxes and cheap food?

It made me sad recently to talk to a Horton High School student about threats to the environment and the future. She told me that most of her peer group has given up. So I was cheered to read that 50,000 young people marched last month in Montreal in order to sue the federal government for its lack of action on carbon pollution.

Environnement Jeunesse wants to bring a class action lawsuit against the feds for placing their futures in jeopardy. The suit is on behalf of all Quebecers aged 35 and under. A Montreal law firm has taken on the case pro bono.

Meanwhile a similar case in Oregon was just backed up by the U.S. Supreme Court. That lawsuit was filed three years ago by 21 youth who argue that the failure of government leaders to combat climate change violates their constitutional right to a clean environment.

Last week Elizabeth May, leaders of the Green Party, called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to set up an all-party ‘war cabinet’ to address what she calls the ultimate existential threat - climate change. Each member would have to set partisan politics aside.

As Nature Canada’s Graham Saul said on CBC Radio lately humans dealt with poisonous DDT and ozone destroying CFCs, surely humans can decide not to destroy the life supports of the planet. We all know that the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report set out the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that we have about a decade to turn things around.

Saul is hopeful because as he says, "If there is a problem that unites us, then there is also a goal that unites us." But the time for polite conversation about the saving the environment is surely over.

Wolfville’s sustainability committee just brought a recommendation to town council against the further development of fossil fuel resources in Nova Scotia and it was approved unanimously. Without ties to political parties and corporations, a grassroots call like this to help cut CO2 emissions virtually in half by the end of the next decade is a no brainer.

There are some best actions we should take as individuals, like doing without a car, shopping locally, becoming vegetarian and opting for renewable energy.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, the cost of solar, geothermal, bioenergy, hydropower and onshore wind will be on par with or cheaper than fossil fuels in only a couple of years. Kings County has lined up some interesting projects using renewables, such as wind and solar.

Economist Paul Romer, who recently shared the Nobel Prize in economics, says, “People think protecting the environment will be so costly and so hard that they want to ignore the problem and pretend it doesn't exist. Once we start to try to reduce carbon emissions, we'll be surprised that it wasn't as hard as we anticipated.”

Furthermore a very rich man in his 80s, Hansjorg Wyss, has announced he will give a billion dollars to conserve 30 per cent of the world in its natural state by 2030. Wyss and his foundation have nine projects in mind, including a 14,250-square-kilometre plateau west of Great Slave Lake. What a unique action in a world dominated by Trumpian self-centredness.

The early American environmentalist Aldo Leopold once said, “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

Nourishing positive new attitudes toward the natural world rather than favouring the one per cent just has to happen.

Published Dec. 4 in the Valley Journal Advertiser