Dear Mr. Prime Minister and all those it may concern,
My name is Amelia Penney-Crocker, I’m 14 years old and I’m a big CBC fan. I’m sure you don’t see many 14 year olds who listen to the CBC regularly, but here we are. The other day I was listening to the call-in show discussing mis-information about COVID. It was right before the Thanksgiving weekend, and so celebrations in this time was also a topic brought up by many callers. I was shocked to see how many people still weren’t sure about masks, but also, how many people seemed to have a ‘must see it to believe it’ stance about COVID. One women said that she is not modifying her normal Thanksgiving practices because every time a holiday has come around during COVID times, professionals have warned that there could be huge spikes and people ‘dropping in the streets,’ as this women said, unless people took prcautions. But every time, after Easter, after Mother’s Day, rates have not gone up enough for great concern. Another women said that she thought the media was grossly over stating the death rate since if you look at the death numbers in Canada it’s very small compared to the number of people who’ve had it.
Listening to these programs I was blown away by these ideas. People seem to have no sense of ‘preventative measures’. At the beginning of the pandemic, when we were closing borders, an epidemiologist said on the radio that in the best case scenario people think we over reacted; people say ‘that wasn’t so bad’. That idea applies to climate change too. Best case scenario, nothing really happens. Best case scenario we never actually end up in the hell like scenario predicted. The fact that there haven’t been big spikes of COVID after holidays are a sign the restrictions worked, not that they were useless. And as for the low death rate, that is because our hospitals have enough capacity to treat people right now. If we let our numbers go up, they’ll fill and the death rate will go up.
There are many people who just refuse to believe in something unless it affects them personally. I dearly hope you, Justin, are not one of those people. Not only for COVID, but for the climate as well. We must take preventative measures to stop, slow, and minimize the effects of the climate crisis. Some action called for by scientist seems extreme, but so too is the situation we have on our hands. And if in the end, things only get as bad as they’ve gotten now, that isn’t proof that we didn’t need to do what we did, but that it worked.
A report by the National Institute of Building Science estimates that for every dollar spent on climate action, we save six dollars in the future (I believe those are American dollars, but the scale factor is the same). I know that Prime Ministers such as yourself only usually serve in office for eight years at the most and as such will never see those benefits pan out. But it is still an important number. Long term thinking and the ability to take preventative measures to save everyone in the future is one of the most important things as a leader. You’ve shown that you can do this for COVID, now do it for climate change.
I hope you have a wonderful day!
Amelia Penney-Crocker