ENVIRONMENTAL ALLIES
Forces unite in fight for planet
It may take the combined efforts of protests like the one Friday that brought teenage activist Greta Thunberg to Vancouver, increasingly dire reports, and even the Canadian election results to finally move the dial on climate action, experts predict.
“Absolutely, people are starting to pay attention,” said Kai Chan, a University of B.C. professor and the Canada Research Chair in biodiversity and ecosystem services.
But from the perspective of experts like Chan, it has taken a long time for people to heed the warnings from the United Nations and other organizations that we now have just 11 years to save the planet before it suffers irreversible damage from climate change.
In May, Chan was one of the co-authors of an 1,800-page international report — the most authoritative study ever produced on the impacts of human activity on the Earth — that drew many dire conclusions, including that a million animal and plant species could be extinct within decades.
But the day the report was released, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had their baby, an event that dominated the headlines and TV news.
The groundbreaking climate study was buried in the news cycle or not reported at all.
The BBC cancelled an interview it had planned with Chan.
“When the report came out, we got trumped by Meghan and her baby,” said Chan, who teaches at UBC’S Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability.
“I thought, let’s just get our priorities straight.”
Thunberg tweeted her outrage when most major British newspapers did not put the damning report on their front pages.
“Where are the ... extra news broadcasts? The front pages,” she asked in a Tweet that was shared more than 15,000 times. “What could be more important? We are failing but we have not yet failed. We can still fix this. But not if we continue like today.”
Chan, though, believes there are now promising signs that society wants to try to address the environmental emergency.
Climate change was a key issue in the federal election, and about twothirds of voters supported parties that promised action, including the Liberals, who will form a minority government, and the NDP, Greens and Bloc, who could play roles with the balance of power and push the Liberals to make the environment an even higher priority.
“I think that what happened was actually the best scenario that could have happened on election day,” Chan said. He said he hopes the more progressive parties will negotiate effectively with the Liberals, saying: ‘Yes, you can have this part of your platform if you step up on your climate-action promises.’
For some, the demand to address global warming was made through the ballot box, while others have taken to the streets. Students have organized climate strikes — the most recent on Friday featured Thunberg and attracted thousands of people in Vancouver — while the civil-disobedience group Extinction Rebellion has held several protests, including one that shut down the Burrard Bridge for about 12 hours earlier this month.
“Extinction Rebellion is a much smaller number of people but more willing to sacrifice and get into people’s faces and that is really changing conversations as well,” said Chan. “It is going to take both of those (movements) and more.”
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Extinction Rebellion began in the U.K. last year, and the Vancouver chapter started in June with a couple of dozen people, but now has more than 60 organizers and hundreds of participants.
“We are planning further escalation and non-violent civil disobedience. Organizing isn’t a one-time thing. Like the school strikes for climate that are building and becoming more powerful and more insistent, we are too,” said Maayan Kreitzman, a UBC student doing her PHD on sustainable agriculture and an Extinction Rebellion organizer.
“As the crisis worsens, more and more people are waking up to the situation we are in and (are) really being called to take action ... it’s about exerting force on whatever government happens to be in power to call attention to the climate crisis that we are in.”
Kreitzman has sympathy for the people inconvenienced by her group’s activities, such as shutting down the Burrard Bridge, but she argues “the era of writing letters and asking nicely” is over.
“We are demanding action, and we are willing to cause disruption and make certain sacrifices in order to do that because we realize that all the conventional methods of campaigning and trying to communicate have failed,” she said.
“When normal people are inconvenienced, and when disruption is caused to business as usual, that is when the people in power really pay attention, and that’s when normal people pay attention, too. And so this is what it’s come to, unfortunately.”
Extinction Rebellion is demanding three things: that the government tell the truth about the urgency of climate change, that carbon emissions be cut to net-zero by 2025, and that a citizens’ assembly be created to advise politicians on the environment.
Net-zero means carbon emissions are balanced with an equivalent in carbon reduction measures, such as planting trees.
Kreitzman noted a hurricane just flattened the Bahamas and a deadly heat wave hit Europe, and said British Columbia, which has had severe forest fires two of the last three summers, should not be complacent.
“Our seawall is under threat. Richmond is definitely not going to be there any more at five degrees of warming, which is where we are going by the end of this century,” Kreitzman said.
STUDENT PROTESTS
Friday’s demonstration was organized by Sustainabiliteens, a Vancouver youth group that has been staging rallies inspired by Thunberg, the 16-year-old who went on strike from her Swedish school every Friday to protest government inaction on the climate crisis.
As the crisis worsens, more and more people are waking up to the situation we are in and (are) really being called to take action ...
“It’s awesome that Greta will be standing here with us and she is the one who instigated the movement,” said Allie Ho, an organizer with Sustainabiliteens and a Grade 12 student at Surrey’s Semiahmoo Secondary.
But Ho stressed the rally is less about Thunberg’s star power and more about youth demanding action now.
“It’s really our future. It is up to us and the people who are in power right now to do something about it, and we might as well make them listen right now when we have a voice.”
The 17-year-old Ho could not vote in this week’s federal election, so protests like this one are how she will send a message to politicians.
She noted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on a climate plan, but hopes leaders of the other progressive parties will work with him for a stronger response to the crisis.
“We want to put it in Trudeau’s face: We are still here, regardless of whether you won or not,” said the soft-spoken student, who said she hopes to study environmental science and international relations at university next year.
“I wish older people would make it more of a priority, especially since they are taking from our future . ... If I ever have children, they won’t be able to see the things that I’ve seen.”
Ho’s group also announced Friday a lawsuit in which more than a dozen Canadian youth are suing the federal government for “actively and knowingly contributing to climate change, and not protecting their charter and public trust rights from harms caused by the climate crisis.”
A month ago, millions of young people went on strike around the world, including in Canadian cities such as Vancouver, where an estimated 100,000 people participated, to demand governments take more action to combat the climate crisis.
Thunberg spoke at the Montreal event, which is said to have drawn as many as 500,000 marchers.
RED FLAGS FOR B.C. IN REPORT
Chan said the major report he co-wrote, Intergovernmental Science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, raised multiple red flags that apply to this area of the world, including warnings that rising ocean waters could permanently flood islands and that salmon stocks are at risk of collapse.
While his report estimated the loss of one million species worldwide, the exact number of threatened species in Canada has not been documented.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “red” list documents 168 species under severe threat in Canada, but notes assessments are not complete so the actual number is expected to be much higher.
“If you talk to birders, there are species like swallows that have taken a massive hit over the last couple of decades,” Chan said.
His report also contained solutions such as improving governance, creating sustainable food and energy systems, conserving land and water, and transforming the economy.
People often feel like the expensive or complicated steps they are taking to try to offset their own impact on the planet aren’t making a big enough difference, Chan said, but he encourages them not to give up.
He is working on several potential solutions that would allow consumers, when they buy the items they need for their dayto-day lives, to also directly help the parts of the planet harmed by those products.
The federal Liberals’ campaign promised net-zero emissions by 2050, but Chan said the party needs to act much faster than that and said compromises, on all sides of the climate debate, will be necessary to truly achieve change.
“The Liberals will realize that they will have to follow through with some of the strong (environmental) promises. I don’t think that means pipelines will stop. I think Trans Mountain will go ahead. But hopefully we can change the conversation,” Chan suggested.
“You could say any new fossil fuel infrastructure can go forward if it has a net-zero impact on the climate.”
But will the election results, scientific reports like his, and climate crisis protests spark meaningful action?
“Is anything really going to change? I don’t know. But I think yes,” Chan predicted.