Climate change deserves an election spotlight

They marched in their millions through the streets of the world on Friday. They came from diverse cultures and nations and spoke in many different tongues.

But the urgent, impassioned, message from this global climate change strike, like the one a week before it, was the same in every language.

Now, this moment, must be a turning point in human history, the protesters said in an estimated 4,500 places and at least 150 countries.

The world’s most powerful political leaders, the world’s richest corporations and, indeed, every citizen of this planet must act as never before to reverse the human actions that are overheating the Earth and threatening our future.

This was their cry for action. This was their plea for a change comparable in its enormity to turning a supertanker around in choppy seas. But it’s transformative action that must come.

To be sure, the world has not ignored the rapid global warming that has raised mean surface temperatures by 1 C above pre-industrial levels — a rise that has topped 3 C in Arctic realms. The United Nations hosted a highly-publicized, one-day Climate Action Summit in New York City on Monday. World leader after world leader rose to pledge new measures to fight climate change.

But despite the often self-congratulatory political rhetoric, the carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are continuing their inexorable climb upward. Some countries have managed to lower the CO2 they pump into the atmosphere. Far more have failed.

And so, temperatures rise. The four seasons get hotter. Ice caps and glaciers melt. Sea levels rise. Our despoiled planet reels from more floods, droughts, wildfires, deadly heat waves and fiercer hurricanes. Forests shrink. Deserts grow. Tens of millions of people have been forced to leave their homes because of these changes. And it’s mainly because of us — humankind.

So, while the slogans on a placard may strike you as simplistic, and while the 21st century world’s economy and its amazing affluence has largely been built on the burning of fossil fuels, we side with those protesters.

They’re right. We should collectively listen closest to the young ones, such as Sweden’s 16-year-old Greta Thunberg who inspired these strikes and attended the Montreal protest on Friday. Today’s teens and children will be middle-aged by midcentury, elderly toward its end. They will inherit what today’s adults — who will be gone by then — bequeath them.

In the Paris Agreement of 2015, 195 countries, including Canada, signed on to limiting global warming to 2 C or less when compared to pre-industrial levels. So far, Canada is not on course to meet its target for slashing emissions.

Some will say Canada is a relatively small contributor to the crisis. Perhaps, but this country is ranked ninth or 10th among the planet’s largest carbon emitters. As a wealthy nation, we should instead be numbered among the leaders of the shift to a new economy based on renewable, sustainable energy. We can pioneer new, green technologies. We can build homes and cities in better ways.

This fall’s federal election gives Canadians a golden opportunity to choose a national government that will accomplish these things. Each party, especially the currently leading Liberals and Conservatives, need to do more to explain in detail their plan for guiding us into a new era.

Canadians hold in their hands the power to bring change. If we take intelligent, meaningful and largely voluntary action now, in this election, we might avoid being compelled to accept more drastic measures in the future.