I open a lot of emails, skim the alarmed subject lines and the paragraphs denouncing the action government is either taking or failing to take, then click to sign the letter they have drafted to send.
Sometimes I add my own spice (as is amply demonstrated on this blog).
This time they were inviting me to submit a letter to the editor to several publications instead, so here I go!
It's fairly off-the-cuff so I highly doubt it'll be published anywhere, but if Stand for Earth is right that 60% of people in Canada don't want a publicly funded pipeline (depressingly low when you think about it; but I suspect most of the other 40% just don't even understand what's at stake or care to even try to understand), then we need our media to start reflecting that in their reporting. If some letters to the editor help newspapers gauge public sentiment to guide their reporting, then I hope this adds to the weight of opinion in a good way.
Prime Minister Carney says we can't afford to meet the extremely weak climate targets the previous Liberal government agreed to. Has he looked at the damage from forest fires, floods and severe weather from tornadoes to simply severe thunderstorms? What was the cost of thousands of Winnipeggers without power for 8-48 hours this past week? And that wasn't even the first mass outage this summer? How much has climate change already cost us in evacuations and insurance claims alone?
Carney and Premier Wab Kinew smile reassuringly and say we'll rebuild from these disasters, but how about also addressing what's causing the damage? We don't have enough reserve to keep rebuilding at this rate -- and it's only going to get worse. And yet they're both salivating to use taxpayer money to expand the pipelines that are at the heart of climate change.
Canadians didn't vote Liberal in 2025 for more pipelines. We never agreed to buying the first one which has turned out as disastrously as predicted. We certainly didn't agree to buying this one.
Every public dollar spent subsidizing fossil fuels is a dollar not spent on healthcare, housing, public transit, or preparing communities for climate disasters.
We simply can't afford not to make climate change a key consideration in all decision making. That starts with just saying no to any and all fossil fuel expansion plans.
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