{"id":38525,"date":"2022-03-25T01:49:09","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T08:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=38525"},"modified":"2022-03-28T13:33:55","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T20:33:55","slug":"climate-action-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2022\/03\/25\/climate-action-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate action update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seth Klein speaks at the Press Conference from the Future on March 12. (<\/em>photo by Lorne Mallin)<\/em><\/p>\n

On March 12, hundreds turned out for a creative event that imagined what could be accomplished by 2025 with climate movement leaders in government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the money that would have gone to piping some of the worst oil in the world to the West Coast, we have instead unleashed a wave of investment in healthy people and healthy land,\u201d Kukpi7 Judy Wilson told A Press Conference from the Future in front of Vancouver Public Library\u2019s central branch.<\/p>\n

Wilson, secretary-treasurer of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, was speaking as if the twinning of the Trans Mountain (TMX) pipeline had been scrapped in 2023 and a TMX reparations and healing secretariat had been created.<\/p>\n

The press conference event was under the banner of a fictional ministry of just transition presenting\u00a0an update on\u00a0new programs and institutions slashing pollution, creating meaningful work, and addressing injustice and inequality in energy, Indigenous rights, housing, transit, public health and more.<\/p>\n

There were two Jewish speakers: Seth Klein of the Climate Emergency Unit and filmmaker Avi Lewis as the minister of just transition, as well as Secw\u00e9pemc\/Ktunaxa filmmaker Doreen Manuel, director, Bosa Centre for Film and Animation,\u00a0Capilano University; Rueben George, Sacred Trust, Tsleil-Waututh Nation; Khalid Boudreau, climate youth\u00a0activist\/organizer; Christine Boyle, Vancouver city councilor; Alison Gu, Burnaby city councilor;\u00a0and Anjali Appadurai, Sierra Club BC.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Kukpi7 Judy Wilson addresses the Press Conference from the Future. (photo by Lorne Mallin)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Klein,\u00a0author of\u00a0A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency<\/em>,\u00a0spoke as chief executive officer and commissioner of the fictional Just Transition Transfer Agency. \u201cWinning [on emissions reductions] also means leaving no one behind,\u201d he said, \u201cespecially the regions that have long relied on revenue and jobs from oil and gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Klein said that, like the Bank of Canada\u2019s qualitative easing policies in the\u00a0first year of the\u00a0COVID-19 pandemic, the just transition could be financed in a similar way.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of that year, the Bank of Canada was buying up federal government securities to finance the COVID emergency response to the tune of $5 billion every week for a year,\u201d said Klein. \u201cOnce we embedded our climate emergency goals within the mandate of\u00a0the\u00a0Bank of Canada, the bank proceeded to do this again for a mere four weeks a year, generating $20 billion for climate and just transition programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis said his government is committed to climate action, having\u00a0carefully studied the conditions and capacities of Canada\u2019s advanced industrial economy. \u201cWe conducted an inventory of our conversion needs to determine how many heat pumps, solar arrays, wind farms and electric buses we needed to electrify virtually everything and end our reliance on fossil fuels,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lewis encouraged the audience to make the future presented in the event happen.\u00a0\u201cDo you want to live in this future? Are we ready to fight for this future? Because this future we described here today is the work of all of us \u2013 the fruits of our imagination and struggle \u2013 and that\u2019s what we came here today to commune around: the future we can build together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manuel, portraying the chair of the land back secretariat, updated progress of an imagined Land Back Act, whose goal is \u201cto reverse the land theft that underlies the colonial nation state of Canada. That means that 80% is being systematically returned to Indigenous jurisdiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the speakers, and entertainment by the Carnival Band, volunteers engaged members of the audience on their thoughts and feelings about the climate emergency.<\/p>\n

The March 12 event was part of a national day of action calling\u00a0for the passage of a national Just Transition Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Just Transition Act is the most important missing piece of climate legislation in Canada and it needs to pass this sitting of the House of Commons,\u201d said Katie Rae Perfitt, senior organizing specialist with\u00a0350.org<\/a>, one of the press conference\u2019s sponsoring organizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot tackle the climate crisis without rapidly phasing out fossil fuels,\u201d said Perfitt. \u201cCanadians deserve immediate action from our federal government to make that shift happen in a way that puts workers and communities first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Courtesy A Press Conference from the Future ogranizers<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seth Klein speaks at the Press Conference from the Future on March 12. (photo by Lorne Mallin) On March 12, hundreds turned out for a creative event that imagined what could be accomplished by 2025 with climate movement leaders in government. \u201cWith the money that would have gone to piping some of the worst oil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38527,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20833,8684,21349,21350,21347,21348,3597,20225,5491],"class_list":["post-38525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-avi-lewis","tag-climate-crisis","tag-doreen-manuel","tag-judy-wilson","tag-just-transition-act","tag-katie-rae-perfitt","tag-politics","tag-seth-klein","tag-social-justice"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}