It's been a busy week for me and Corrina: after organizing the climate change stream, we both were able to speak at the Go Green at Saugeen forum. I introduced the stream with an overview of the other 5200 events held around the world for the International Day of Action on Climate Change, which were so successfully organized by Bill McKibben's 350.org. We launched a one month challenge between Saugeen Shores and Brockton for One Million Acts of Green, and had a number of amazing speakers including David Lawless, who is a youth Climate Champion from the British Council of Canada (It was also complete with a speech by Ben Lobb, our Conservative MP, about local environmental initiatives). Corrina was able to end off the day with a quick overview of 12 things we can all do to address climate change, and we were off home to pack.
Just a short while later, we took off in the Toyota Prius hybrid car generously loaned to us by Jason van Geel, President and General Manager of Carlsun Energy Solutions. Late that night, we arrived in Ottawa, took 4 hours rest, then got up to attend the 3rd day of the first PowerShift Canada, organized by a team headed by Amber Church. It was a fabulous atmosphere: youth organizing youth to have the tools to learn more about the climate crisis, the politics internationally leading up to the Copenhagen Summit, and how to lobby Canadian politicians.
We had arrived after the great gathering for Climate-Day: Fill the Hill, where 2500 people of all ages had gathered on Parliament Hill to call for serious action on climate change this fall. From their website: "Our story begins with university student, Gracen Johnson. She heard from David Suzuki, while watching CBC’s The Hour,
that our best chance to affect real change in our government’s inaction
towards climate change is to fill Parliament Hill with concerned
citizens, just like her." Check out the website for more about the speakers and see the inspiring videos: this is just one more example of how one person can make a huge difference.
Early Monday morning, Corrina and I, along with a group of perhaps 150 youth, gathered again on the Hill to do a flash mob climate dance, preceding the Lobby Day where 65 meetings with MPs had been organized by the youth. The youth went off to meetings, and later gathered again to go witness the Question Period in the House of Commons. What followed was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.
The Question Period had escalated to the normal back and forth seemingly childish bickering between the MPs, and I could see the youth becoming more and more agitated in the audience. Suddenly, one person stood up and yelled to the parliamentarians to pass Bill C-311 (the Climate Change Accountability Bill that was being delayed in committee), as well as the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Some of the youth, unknown to the rest of the group, had decided that they wanted to protest there, and started a call and answer using slogans such as "I say 311, you say sign it, 311, sign it...", and this action was carried on by youth after youth taking up the call as the leaders were removed from the balcony. All of the spectators from that balcony were eventually expelled from the building, whether participating or not; there was a lot of press following this protest, including a Press Release from the organizers of PowerShift and the Canadian Youth Delegation saying they were not involved in organizing the protest.
Although I do not personally feel that this protest is a method I would use to shift politics, I could definitely empathize with their frustration, since it seems that politicians are not taking climate change as seriously in Canada as needed to shift away from dangerous climate change and leading into the post-Kyoto international agreement.
We are very lucky to have so many dedicated youth who care about this most important issue: keep up the good work Amber, Gracen, Matthew, Aiden, Tria, David, and teams!