The climate crisis won’t fix itself
Polls are showing the environment and climate change are low on the list of issues for the June 2 Ontario election, sitting at fifth place behind health care, cost of living, housing and the economy.
We’re not going to fix our climate crisis until we prioritize it. From a purely economic point of view, it’s simple: we pay now to avert the crisis, or we pay much more later for the damage caused by flooding, high winds, forest fires, ice storms and extreme heat.
Local environmental groups invited all the local candidates to individual recorded interviews to answer environmental questions that affect all of us on a daily basis: climate change, transportation, housing, land and water protection, and environmental justice. The Progressive Conservative and New Blue candidates either refused or ignored the request. The Liberal, NDP and Green candidates who did accept can be found on the Waterloo Region Elections YouTube channel and Facebook page.
If candidates aren’t making themselves accessible now, what can we expect from them if they’re elected?
The opportunities to create jobs, retrofit homes, save energy and money, and make Ontario an attractive vacation destination are endless. We can’t do it without all levels of government having "skin in the game" pecially to assist lower-income people. We no longer have time left to tippytoe around the changes that need to happen.
An international poll by IPSOS found a big difference between what we need to do and what we are likely to do:
What we need to do
■ Go car-free, or electric as second best;
■ Eat a plant-based diet;
■ Avoid air travel;
■ Switch to clean, renewable energy;
■ Have fewer children.
What we are more likely to do
■ Buy products with less packaging;
■ Avoid buying new goods;
■ Save water and energy at home;
■ Recycle glass, paper, plastic.
The poll also found that people overestimated the impact of their actions. This shouldn’t be surprising as co-authors Seth Wynes and Kimberly A. Nicholas found 10 Canadian high school science textbooks failed to mention the five actions we need to take and focused on incremental lower-impact changes.
Based on the five actions we need to take that have the biggest impact on reducing our emissions, we need a provincial government to:
■ Invest in public transit that is affordable, accessible, frequent and connected to trail systems to help reduce or replace personal car use;
■ Reintroduce incentives/rebates for electric vehicles, increase domestic electric vehicle production and increase the number of charging stations; Prevent further loss of farmland and protect water;
■ Increase local food processing and preservation facilities to make Ontario produce available yearround;
■ Introduce rebates/incentives to install air-source heat pumps/geothermal to replace natural-gas furnaces and water heaters. Invest in local manufacturers to make them;
■ Improve building codes to mandate higher standards of energy efficiency toward “net zero” and the use of sustainable building methods and materials;
■ Invest in communities to improve their desirability as vacation destinations to help reduce air travel;
■ Ensure universal, evidence-based sex education, access to safe, reliable and affordable birth control, and protect the reproductive rights of women. Overpopulation is the elephant in the room.
Based on the decimation of all environmental protections these last four years, we cannot afford to wait any longer.