Vancouver Sun

Climate rally follows the money

Social activist and union firebrand speak in country’s financial heart

- JOSEPH BREAN

As a study in contrasts, Thursday’s climate change rally in Toronto’s financial district had much to offer.

Sweet-grass smoke mixed with the acrid downtown smell of hot tar and exhaust. Finance types on coffee breaks strolled past a woman failing to sell copies of the Socialist Worker. Speaker after speaker said this land belongs to First Nations — Mississaug­as of the New Credit, Anishinaab­e and Haudenosau­nee — but the private security guards keeping watch made clear this corner of King and Bay streets is also TD territory.

But no contrast was greater than that between the two main speakers: Naomi Klein, lion of the left, socialist slayer of brands, champion of the economical­ly oppressed; and Jerry Dias, head of Canada’s largest private-sector union Unifor and the voice of hundreds of thousands who work in the energy sector, oilsands and automobile production.

This odd couple of a gel-haired union heavyweigh­t and an anti- capitalist oracle in sensible shoes is no accident. It is the new future for climate activism. But it is uncertain and untested.

“We have key difference­s, but what unites us is greater than that, and that’s why we’re coming together,” she said. “What you’re seeing are the first steps for the new kind of climate movement.”

Unifor’s presence made the rally, in support of a larger protest this summer, a “historic moment,” she said, and “absolutely unpreceden­ted anywhere in the world. There’s trade union presence in the climate movement, but not from the sector that represents the extractive industry as powerfully as Unifor does. It’s very bold.”

Even the effort to strike a positive tone is a shift, Klein said, from past doomsaying and demands for closure of the oilsands toward a more optimistic vision of a possible future economy, based on wind, solar and geothermal energy.

The problem, though, is that for climate activists, the time has been now for well over a decade.

Once it was all Hollywood and Al Gore at the Oscars, but that eventually fizzled. Now, a new model is being championed, with less glitz and more grit.

“What happened is there was a huge amount of public concern, public attention, and then the financial crisis hit. It’s very simple,” Klein said in an interview. Climate change simply dropped off the political agenda.

A key problem was that many of the climate change policies proposed “didn’t put justice at the centre.” Many would have increased costs for regular consumers, and there was not enough emphasis on the positive opportunit­ies for job creation.

Now there are strong solar economies, in Germany, for example. In Canada, she said Alberta is in the best position to lead, with optimal conditions for geothermal, solar and wind, and also many newly unemployed workers because of the drop in oil prices.

This opportunit­y will be a “real test” for the province’s new New Democratic Party government.

The purpose of the rally was to promote the March for Jobs, Justice and the Climate, which will happen in Toronto July 5 to coincide with Pan American Economic Summit meetings on climate and an expected statement on climate from Pope Francis.

The audience was equal in number to the activists — about 30 people in each. They got a few honks, but none of the passing suits seemed to stop or pay much attention.

There was, of course, a hint of class warfare in the frequent allusions to the people in the glass towers — this was the main reason for holding the rally on a busy corner in the heart of the financial district.

“We have key difference­s, but what unites us is greater than that, and that’s why we’re coming together. NAOMI KLEIN AUTHOR AND ACTIVIST

 ?? TYLER ANDERSON/NATIONAL POST ?? Naomi Klein speaks at a rally Thursday in Toronto. ‘What you’re seeing are the first steps for the new kind of climate movement,’ she said.
TYLER ANDERSON/NATIONAL POST Naomi Klein speaks at a rally Thursday in Toronto. ‘What you’re seeing are the first steps for the new kind of climate movement,’ she said.

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