Activist calls on Canada to push for climate clout
OTTAWA — Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg is urging developing island nations to use the United Nations Security Council election as leverage to push Canada and Norway to step up their games on climate change.
The 17-year-old from Sweden has become one of the most recognized climate activists in the world with her climate strike movement growing into a global phenomenon last year.
She is the headline signatory on a letter to UN ambassadors of small island states, which says that Canada and Norway both give lip service to climate action but remain steadfast in their commitments to both expand fossilfuel production and subsidize oil companies.
“For the young generation who will inherit the consequences of these decisions, it is critical that those who claim to be leading on climate action are held to account for decisions they are making back at home,” the letter reads.
Three other youth climate activists and 22 global climate scientists also signed the letter, including Eddy Carmack, a retired Fisheries and Oceans Canada scientist who was awarded the Order of Canada this year for his work on climate change.
The letter asks the ambassadors to raise the issue with Canada and Norway “and demand that they unite behind the science” of climate change, commit to no new oil and gas exploration or production, and phase out their existing production.
Canada is going up against Norway and Ireland for the two seats available in next week’s election to the UN body. Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau has devoted a lot of political capital to trying to win the spot.
With most European nations expected to side with their continental neighbours, Canada has put its effort into wooing countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, including most of the more than three dozen island nations targeted by Wednesday’s letter. Trudeau has spoken or met directly with the leaders of nearly one-third of those countries since February.
Thunberg first expressed her discontent with Canada’s climate policies to Trudeau last September, when the two met in Montreal on the same day hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets as part of a global climate strike. In their letter, Thunberg and the others say Canada is nowhere close to hitting its Paris climate agreement targets.