Jane Fonda adds star power to march for climate change
Broad coalition — with notably divergent views on energy — brings in big names to Sunday rally
Actor and activist Jane Fonda has added her name to a hefty list of celebrities lending their fame to the clean-energy cause at a Queen’s Park demonstration Sunday afternoon.
“I am coming to Toronto to stand with First Nations, workers and the powerful movement building solutions to the climate crisis,” said the 77-year-old Academy Award winner in a release Thursday.
Fonda — still remembered for her 1970 arrest in Seattle while marching with indigenous occupiers of a U.S. army base — saluted First Nations for their role “on the front lines of climate change.”
Fonda’s return to the green arena marks a coming home of sorts. Three weeks ago, she told reporters at a Greenpeace rally in Vancouver she was reluctant to head “back to the barricades” — until she read the latest book by Canadian author Naomi Klein, also attending on Sunday.
“It jolted me awake,” she said of the global warming-focused bestseller This Changes Everything.
Fonda, a former fitness guru, opted just a few days ago to dive into Sunday’s March for Jobs, Justice and the Climate, which she’ll attend on the heels of tracking wolves at “my favourite ex-husband’s ranch in Montana.”
David Suzuki, Stephen Lewis and musician Joel Plaskett are also on the scroll of notables.
After speeches, the march will start in front of the Ontario Legislature and wend its way toward Allan Gardens, all under the guiding light of a solar-powered torch, the greener sibling to the Pan Am Games flame.
Scheduled two days before Toronto hosts the Climate Summit of the Americas, the rally brings together a disparate — and sometimes clashing — group of interests.
Members of Unifor, a union representing 40,000 oil, gas and chemical-sector workers, will march arm in arm with Idle No More supporters and Greenpeace, which runs an ongoing “Stop the Tar Sands” campaign. “Unifor’s not looking to shut down the oilsands,” spokesperson Dave Moffatt said.
“We use fossil fuels currently and it’s a major part of our economy. But we think we have a lot more in common with people who are advocating for sustainable economic growth with a thought to climate change.”
That action includes a call for recognition of indigenous rights, a higher minimum wage, renewed investment in green energy and preventing a rise in global temperature beyond 2 C.
Low oil prices prompted production slowdowns and thousands of job losses in the oilsands in 2015. That makes now the ideal time to shine an efficient light on alternative energy and climate change, said Idle No More campaigner Clayton Thomas-Muller.
“Idle No More is standing with Canada’s biggest unions . . . to make a very clear ask to people in Toronto and in the entire country to step forward and to recognize how extractive industries impact water, air quality and how our treaty rights all are affected,” Thomas-Muller told the Star from Winnipeg, where he is organizing satellite demonstrations Saturday.
Sean Markey, an associate professor at the resource and environmental planning program at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., stressed the job possibilities fostered by “sustainable” resource development rather than rapid production.
“The oilsands are obviously critical to employment in Alberta. It touches just about everyone in the province,” he noted.
The rally, organized by 350.org, an international green group, starts at the Ontario Legislature at 1p.m. Sunday. About 1:45 p.m., demonstrators will begin to march south on University Ave., turn east on Dundas St., pivot north at Jarvis St. and wind up at Allan Gardens, where a picnic awaits.