Dear Mister Prime Minister, and all those it may concern,
There is a slogan being used by some climate activists during this pandemic: ‘Fight every Crisis.’ The crises they’re talking about are the current health crisis, the economic crisis it’s creating, and the health, economic and ecological crisis of climate change. Early in the pandemic I started writing down quotes form various people on television and the radio, quotes that relate to COVID-19, but are relevant to the climate discussion. I recently found these notes, and though I only wrote down a few I would like to share them with you: the government responsible for leading the recovery from COVID and leading Canada’s fight against climate change.
“If we don’t take drastic steps now, we’ll end up like Italy in a matter of days or weeks.” This quote was fairly early on in the pandemic when hotspots outside of China were forming. This was also not long after the massive Australia fires. (If you check out this link: https://ameliapenneycrocker.com/fifth-letter-australia/ you will see my writing on the subject of the Australia fires). I wrote underneath that quote an altered one: “If we don’t take drastic steps now, we’ll end up like Australia in a matter of months or years.” When this virus was just in China, people warned it could come here. But it didn’t feel that real here, and we almost didn’t take the steps needed because they felt drastic. Luckily Canada did just enough, the USA however didn’t, and we all know how that worked out for them. Currently, the global south is facing the beginning of the climate crisis. But we still don’t act because it’s not yet effecting us to a large degree. But when it does, we’ll be sorry.
I believe it was in the same interview that someone said “We need to be proactive not reactive”. This simply goes to highlight my previous point. Do something before we’re suffering in this country. Both to minimize suffering in less fortunate countries and to stop the suffering from coming here at all. Would you rather spend millions finding new jobs for oil workers, or millions rebuilding destroyed homes? One brings Canada to a better and more-prosperous place, the other just is bringing us back to where we already were.
“We need to reopen our economy now so that our children have a strong economy when they grow up.” This was said by a Republican politician in the US and though I try to keep things Canadian in all the letters I send you but I couldn’t resist talking about this quote. First of all, this politician is valuing the economy over lives. Keeping the economy totally shutdown long term can have serious effects on people’s lives, particularly the lives of low income families; but the reality is, opening up completely while there are still loads of active cases is very dangerous. I find it funny that he cited keeping the economy good for the children, when the thing that would really keep the economy good for the children is stopping climate change. Climate Change will destroy our economic prosperity! If you are pro future economy, you have to be anti climate change.
Now we come to the last quote “Best case scenario, nothing happens and people ask why we over reacted.” I think that speaks for itself.
I hope you have a wonderful day!
Amelia Penney-Crocker