Why this election I am voting for a Green New Deal

By Claire O’Manique, #OurTime2019 organizer

Ottawa Climate Strike; Youth pose in front of parliament with an Our Time to Rise Banner. Photo Credit: Nhattan Nguyen

Every election feels important, but this federal election is particularly critical. When Canadians head to the ballot box, they will elect the government that will lead us through 4 critical years in the very short window we have to tackle the climate emergency. While some politicians want to make it seem as though climate change is up for debate, climate science and Indigenous knowledge are clear: the climate crisis is a fact. We are in the midst of a climate emergency, where the most vulnerable are already feeling severe impacts, and we must reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 in order to remain under the 1.5 C of warming.

This means that every decision has to be made foregrounding the climate crisis. Are we going to build a more just, decarbonized future where all life can thrive? Or are we going to continue to let corporations under let fossil fueled colonial capitalism push us further into the sixth mass extinction?

Countries like Costa Rica, Belize, France and Ireland have put in place bans on the continued exploration of oil and gas. New Zealand has banned offshore oil exploration. The Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has vowed to ban fracking . In Canada however, the federal government has continued to drive forth the lie that we can expand our fossil fuel infrastructure and decrease our carbon emissions. Shannon Daub and Seth Klein have labelled this the “new climate denialism”, where “the fossil fuel industry and our political leaders assure us that they understand and accept the scientific warnings about climate change — but they are in denial about what this scientific reality means for policy and/or continue to block progress in less visible ways.”

This election represents an opportunity to chart a new course forward. We have an opportunity to address the climate crisis not as a stand alone issue to be dealt with through a narrow set of policies that tinker at the margins of the system but as a crisis that intersects with all the issues…