“Every one of those deaths is a mark of shame for the governments of countries like the U.K. and Germany who have protected patents over human lives.”
More than three million people across the globe have died of Covid-19 in the roughly nine months since India and South Africa first proposed a temporary patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines, a popular measure that Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other rich countries have blocked.
Seth Klein is the author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. He is also the team lead and director of strategy with the David Suzuki Institute's Climate Emergency Unit.
The past month has been a wake-up call for many Canadians as large parts of the country sweltered under an intense “heat dome” that is believed to have contributed to at least 719 sudden deaths in British Columbia.
Public opinion has been shaken by the ‘discovery’ of unmarked graves of children who died in residential schools. The word ‘discovery’ has to be placed in quotation marks because Indigenous communities have been saying for many years that terrible things happened at these places. The time has come to call this what it is – a genocide.
"We don't have to wait for international agreements on the climate and nature crises," the new alliance states. "Change can happen now."
A group of global politicians on Monday launched the Global Alliance for a Green New Deal to advance "the creation of a greener, fairer world where all people and the planet can flourish."
