Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland Puts #ElbowsUp for Climate Action

Nov. 9, 2025

Mayors and councillors are looking for nation-building projects that support a strong economy and protect Canadian sovereignty, without the climate emissions that burn communities to the ground.

Thousands of people had to flee their homes in July, 2024 when a wildfire destroyed one-third of the town of Jasper, Alberta. A rapid attribution study the following month concluded that climate change made high temperatures ahead of the fire twice as likely, combining with decades of fire-suppression management to produce the second-most expensive blaze in Canadian history.

Last month, Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland attended the Canada’s Clean50 Summit in Toronto as part of Elbows Up for Climate. The coalition of more than 250 mayors and city councillors from across Canada is calling on the federal government to back nation-building projects that create jobs and draw investment while responding to the climate emergency.

Ireland delivered this poem to Summit participants October 15 after accepting a Clean50 award on behalf of his community. Days later, he was acclaimed to a seventh term as mayor.

Elbows Up For Climate Action

The earth recoils at human toils
that alter its foundation.
Yet we persist, some still insist:
no need for climate action.

Savage storms on sea and land;
fires and floods and warming.
We hide our heads in deepening sand
and disregard the warning.

We dig and drill, deep coffers to fill
of the resource rich among us.
And leave to weep the vulnerable heap
who suffer our indulgence.

Emissions rise, to no surprise
we fuel our own destruction.
As we deny what meets the eye,
we squander our salvation.

Communities burn, yet we won’t learn
we practice immolation;
a sacrifice to feed our vice
for fossil fuel consumption.

The endless haste to feed our taste
for ease and satisfaction.
We can’t conceive the fate we leave
a future generation.

It seems to me that it should be
a higher aspiration
to lead the way to a cleaner day
for all Earth’s population.

Yet time grows late as we debate
mere thoughts of mitigation.
If we don’t act we’ll all look back
and curse our hesitation.

But circumstance leaves little chance
of common resolution.
The entrenched few won’t change their view;
they cling to their position.

We can’t repeat that choice they keep
we must forge a new direction.
Confront the threat, the moment met,
no time for abdication.

So one bold step, a duty kept,
to honour our conviction.
It’s not too late to set things straight:
Elbows Up For Climate Action.

[Top photo: Mayor Richard Ireland at the Canada’s Clean50 Summit, Municipality of Jasper/Instagram]