New report from Canada’s leading environmental groups lays out a roadmap for recovery that ties federal support to emissions reductions, prioritizes worker training and addresses longstanding inequalities
More than a dozen environmental organizations in Canada are calling on the federal government to attach “green strings” to its economic recovery measures that prioritize both workers and efforts to address the climate crisis.
In her new 75-minute podcast entitled Humanity has not yet failed — recorded under the COVID-19 lock down — Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg explains that there is no solution to the climate crisis without system change.
“The climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved within today's political and economic systems. That is not an opinion, that's a fact,” she says, with typical bluntness.
For Canada, an easy place to start would be the cancellation of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion
Once in a generation. Once in a lifetime.
These phrases keep cropping up to describe the historic opportunity now before us. With governments preparing to spend massively to revive a global economy battered by the COVID-19 crisis, there is a chance to use the coming stimulus to not only emerge from this recession but also put people back to work building a world that avoids further climate breakdown.
Building a More Humane, Robust Way of Putting Food on the Table
Covid-19 outbreaks are now reaching far beyond the meatpacking industry. Migrant farmworkers in fruit orchards and vegetable fields, long the targets of intense exploitation, are seeing their health put in even greater jeopardy as they’re pushed to feed an increasingly voracious supply chain in pandemic-time.
Strengthening the care economy, expanding the public sector, and a Green New Deal are vital in the wake of COVID-19
A good reflex to have, if we’re critical of reopening the economy in the same way as it was before, is to use the term ‘reconstruction’ rather than ‘recovery,’” says Guillaume Hébert.
“That choice of terms is, itself, a political choice.”
A study published in Nature Climate Change recently found that, in early April, daily global carbon dioxide emissions decreased by 17 percent compared to the 2019 mean levels. Because of shelter-in-place rules and businesses being closed, people have been driving and flying less, leading to lower emissions.
[Not only are existing pensions too few, too poor, and/or facing increased downward pressure with repeated stock market crashes, but some of our pension funds actually invest in high objectionable businesses. Another needed element of a "green recovery"....Gene McGuckin]