Keep fighting for Kyoto, May urges
Green leader calls for town criers
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has a New Year’s resolution that might make the prime minister cringe.
“I made a New Year’s resolution, much like the rest of you, to start to lose weight. And I want to start with Stephen Harper,” she told a crowd of supporters Saturday while addressing climate issues and Canada’s recent withdrawal from the Kyoto accord under the Harper government.
The Windsor Essex County Environment Committee invited May to speak at the Dr. David Suzuki elementary school about her experience in December at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa.
May said though Canada has filed a legal notice of intent to withdraw, it won’t take legal effect until December.
Until then, Canada is a party to the Kyoto accord, she said.
“We need to somehow figure out how to get rid of that letter (of withdrawal). We have to insist that Canada reduce greenhouse gases fast enough to avoid the worst-case scenario. We still have some time but we don’t have much.”
May encouraged Windsorites to take a stand against rising levels of greenhouse gases by meeting with members of parliament, regardless of the party.
“We need to educate each other,” she said, suggesting each attendee become a “town crier.”
Charlie Wright, Leamington’s deputy mayor and cochair of WECEC, called May’s speech inspiring.
“We base ourselves on a multi-party state with different viewpoints,” he said. “We have different parties and to exclude all of the other parties to just the governing party is totally anti-democratic.”
May was the first speaker in the WECEC’S Green Speaker Series.
“We wanted to have an opinion on the Kyoto accord that is not just from the one-sided government,” Wright said.
Wright, who co-chairs the committee with Windsor Coun. Alan Halberstadt, said this year the WECEC’S focus is renewable energy.
“We’re going to start with solar energy as the first alternative energy topic,” he said.
“With the Kyoto accord and global warming, it’s indisput- able what’s happening. We have to look at alternative energies that do not pollute the environment or pollute them a lot less.”