Op-Ed: Climate change is a big problem. Citizens must demand many small solutions.
A citizen-led movement is rising up across Canada, pushing for bold solutions to the climate crisis, including a national transition to renewable energy.
Many of these solutions have been under discussion long before recent Canadian elections, and many will be coming to the fore during the next session of Parliament.
I’m a journalist and a climate activist based in Ontario who wanted to write about climate change. I started the climate change column at Canadian Journalism Review, the first independent Canadian online magazine devoted to covering climate change journalism, where I’ve written for years.
A few months ago, a friend of mine suggested that I do a climate change column for the Star, where I’m the national affairs writer. I did. In the summer of 2018, I wrote an op-ed on carbon taxes. I’d like to think I was the first one to put climate change at centre stage in the Star, but in fact the issue was already on my mind.
As the world warms and the oceans rise, Canada is locked in an existential struggle to mitigate climate change at home and abroad. This fight is happening while the world is reeling from the collapse of the Paris climate agreement and the global economic slowdown. As I’ve travelled across the country, I’ve seen small acts of resistance being undertaken.
In the summer of 2018, I was fortunate to meet an Ontario judge who is also a volunteer firefighter. He told me he worries about the state of his neighbourhood in an increasingly fire-prone city because of the extreme changes in air quality and temperature that have become a normal part of life.
“Even with all the money in the world, I can’t afford to buy a home or move to a city where I’m not living in a fire danger zone,” he said.
The same is happening in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In Toronto, we are starting to see communities in the east start to make commitments to cut their gas use. Some, like the neighbourhood where I live, are doing so because they want to live up to the kind of environment that a healthy community demands. The
