Suzuki urges Liberals to double-down on climate change fight

HALIFAX—When Jonathan Wilkinson gets back to work, and assuming he is still federal environment minister, there will already be an important letter sitting on his desk. He would be well advised to pay it close attention. It was sent by David Suzuki, the scientist and legendary climate change warrior, who for years has been trying to convey the need for urgent action on this file to an array of myopic federal politicians. So far, Suzuki has fared more like Cassandra than Paul Revere. With a few important exceptions, like the Liberal government’s carbon tax, Suzuki’s early warning across a range of climate issues has been largely ignored. The change to decarbonize has so far moved at a glacial rather than transformative pace, and could literally cost humanity “the world as we know it.” Climate change is a blaze that requires water bombers, tanker trucks, and high pressure hoses to get under control. What we have now is a bucket-brigade. “I’m writing to you now with a sense of desperation since the recent pronouncement that we will hit the 1.5 degree C rise in five years! It is an emergency that must not remain a political football any longer,” his letter states. Wilkinson once told Suzuki that being minister of the environment was his “dream job.” Years of neglect by his predecessors could turn it into the nightmare portfolio. During Stephen Harper’s tenure as PM, Suzuki tells Wilkinson that Canada fell far behind the rest of the industrialized world, by suppressing and “wilfully ignoring climate change.” Ever since, the CPC has paid a heavy political price for burying its head in the tarsands. Suzuki implores the PM to do better. Since Trudeau didn’t end fossil fuel subsidies as he promised, and didn’t meet climate targets in his previous six years in power, there is a lot of room for improvement. “Trudeau must move decisively beyond this model of failed leadership on climate,” he wrote. Praising the Liberal government’s response to the pandemic, including extending a safety net to get people through COVID-19, Suzuki said the same approach needs to be applied to climate change. “….It was made all the easier because COVID was treated as an emergency that brought other parties together behind government, and this is what we must now do for climate change. The election has created a unique opportunity to actually do it.” In his letter to Wilkinson, Suzuki takes issue with Justin Trudeau’s declaration that he had “won” the election and received a “mandate.” If that were true, his victory would have been more decisive, Suzuki argues, since the pandemic response was so successful. In other words, the results of the election showed Suzuki that as good as the government’s pandemic response was, it was not enough to get Canadians to trust Trudeau on other issues, like climate change. “If Trudeau has heard the electorate, he knows it is not a victory or a mandate when his party received fewer votes than the leading opposition party, and could even end up with fewer seats than it had going into the election…Trudeau must take this as a signal that bolder, more progressive, more responsive action on the climate front is called for by how Canadians voted.” One of the most important things that Suzuki conveyed to Wilkinson is the need for the prime minister to declare that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the authoritative body on climate, and that Canada abides by its conclusions and recommended actions and targets. In practical terms, that is a big ask. Accepting the guidance of IPCC would mean leaving most of the known reserves of fossil fuels in the ground “if we are to avoid catastrophic climate chaos.” Why the need to defer to the experts? Because time is running out on a problem that short-term political thinking can never solve. In a way, Suzuki tells Wilkinson, serious climate change is already here. Canada is warming at twice the global average, four times this rate in the Arctic. With the longest marine coastline in the world, “we are already being hammered by sea level rise that threatens to overwhelm much of our coast”, something Inuit have been warning about for decades. And in real time, Canada’s wilderness areas, and land and ocean-based wildlife is being “ripped apart” by warming that has already taken place. Suzuki tells Wilkinson that fighting climate change is the immediate responsibility of the federal government, and only a national response will do. He bases his conclusion on the Supreme Court of Canada’s finding that climate change is a “national concern”, and the fact that both the UN and the IPCC agree that the climate crisis is a “code red” for humanity. But how does Justin Trudeau develop a national approach with a minority government and a five-party Parliament? Contrary to seeing that as an obstacle, Suzuki argues the composition of the new Parliament actually presents an opportunity. The PM should involve all parties in a truly national effort, and that is exactly what Suzuki tells Wilkinson he ought to do. “Trudeau should appoint an all-party Climate Emergency Council to set and enforce policy to reduce emissions in accordance with what science tells us about the danger we face.” By doing that, Suzuki writes, Trudeau would be honouring the electorate’s support across all major parties, most especially the NDP and the Greens, who gave the PM his latest minority government. “That is the message of this election. Your government can move ahead by inviting the opposition to work together with government on the crisis of climate change.” Is that elder wisdom or Pollyanna thinking from a man who has somehow retained his optimism despite everything he knows about the planet’s dire straits? It entirely depends on the tone of the new Parliament. Judging from the violence and vitriol, and the personal sniping seen during the recent election, it could be difficult. Erin O’Toole may be too preoccupied trying to save his job to help fight a problem that his own party voted in convention not to recognize. Bad enough to some Conservatives that O’Toole flip-flopped on the party’s longstanding opposition to a carbon tax. Would he really happily join in an effort to leave Alberta fossil fuels in the ground, when his main job for the next few months will be convincing his social conservative base that he is still one of them? Would Jagmeet Singh agree to playing the enabler to the government on the climate change file, after he received no electoral credit for pushing the Liberals to a more generous response to the pandemic? And will Annamie Paul even be around, should Trudeau and Wilkinson take Suzuki’s advice? It is entirely possible that Elizabeth May could be interim leader of the Greens in a few months, should Paul choose to resign or if she is dropped after a leadership review. Fighting climate change is not for the faint of heart. Whatever reservations politicians might have about pulling on the same oar to prevent further global warming, there is one person who is ready to help unite the country in this epic race against time: David Suzuki. As he writes to Jonathan Wilkinson: “I pledge to do all I can to convert public concern over the climate crisis into concrete citizen action by reducing their energy use by 25 per cent in a year, something the Japanese did after Fukushima without any government legislation.” The letter to Wilkinson was signed, David Suzuki, Grandfather. Some grandfather. Michael Harris is an award-winning columnist and author. The Hill Times