Maybe some of Nanaimo’s young environmentally minded students can teach the grown-ups a thing or two.
Departure Bay Eco-School produced a YouTube video that will be shown at an expo at the United Nations’ conference on climate change this month in Paris.
Students are the stars, suggesting priorities for politicians. They ask for expanded environmental education in schools. They ask for more solar power generation and electric vehicles. They ask that we stop cutting down old-growth forests and polluting rivers, lakes and oceans. They ask that we do more.
Their requests are straightforward, simply spoken, and yet in those few words, they manage to summarize what many of us want.
We do hope for real outcomes from the UN conference in Paris, and there is reason to be encouraged. This week’s first ministers meeting with the prime minister and the premiers in Ottawa, which set new climate targets and policies including, crucially, in Alberta, provides our country’s Paris contingent with greater legitimacy.
We expect that our new federal government, anxious to make the impression of following through on campaign promises, will wish to be able to report back favourably to Canadians. We’re a little disappointed that our country’s standing emissions targets are to be considered ‘a floor,’ which means that standing pat is a possibility. But we like to think there will be urgency at this climate conference, because we know the time to act is today. We know the time to act was yesterday.
In our capacity as movie critics, we give Departure Bay Eco-School’s video two thumbs up. If that’s what we’re sending to Paris, then we’re sending the right message.