City seniors speaking out about climate change
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on September 27, 2024.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
Senior citizens have experienced their share of extreme weather in their lifetimes and on Tuesday a group of them are staging a two-hour rally in front of City Hall.
The Seniors for Climate rally starting at 3 p.m. will feature numerous speakers talking about climate change, solutions and the impact of it.
Barb Phillips of the organizing committee said the chosen date also happens to be National Seniors Day in Canada and International Day for Older Persons.
“It was started this spring in different parts of Canada. It’s mostly volunteers,” said Phillips.
“It’s seniors across Canada that are wanting to bring attention to the current climate crisis that we’re all experiencing from southern Alberta to around the world. In Lethbridge, we have chosen to do a rally at City Hall,” said Phillips, who noted about 70 communities across the country are hosting rallies on the same day.
“Seniors are really concerned about these unnatural disasters,” noted Phillips, saying that while forest fires have occurred for generations, there have never been natural wildfires such as experienced in July at Jasper and previously at Lytton, B.C. and Fort McMurray.
“We all know climate changes are happening because we’re living them day to day. They are affecting our air, our water, our earth and maybe more importantly for seniors, our health,” added Phillips.
The motto for the rally is “Later is too late.”
“We want the action now, we want action from our political figures, locally, provincially, federally, around the world. We need action to really take seriously climate change there is a problem, there are solutions but we need bold action,” added Phillips.
Seniors are a good group “to rattle the chains,” Phillips said, with that demographic making up 25 per cent of Canada’s population.
“We’ve got the time, in most cases we’ve got the energy, we’ve got the knowledge.” So seniors bring a lot of life experience to the table and have a good perspective on what’s happening in their communities and the world.
Organizers are hoping to see people of all ages at the rally “because this is not a senior issue at all. It’s everyone’s issue.”
Phillips says she sees the world different from a climate perspective than when she was a child and her parents were eking out a living on a homestead in Alberta.
“It’s different now and I think we just have to admit that it needs pretty bold action. It needs committed action.”
The program features numerous speakers and the Raging Grannies who will perform twice.
17-16
What solution did they propose? She didn’t say (or the author failed to include it). Anything more realistic than putting solar panels in space or on Mars to beam energy down to us?
And.. Isn’t a natural wildfire the same as a forest fire?
I support them in demanding action but they’re protesting at City Hall.. the same place which always promises downtown crime will go down.
“current climate crisis”. That’s funny.
What is “funny” , is that you think it is a joke.
Pure hyperbole.
The statement ” a good perspective on what’s happening in their communities”, I can hardly wait to hear this and their local solutions. Will we hear about say for a few examples: a tree bylaw to protect more local trees, a cat bylaw to protect our songbirds and endangered bats, intensive feedlot concentrations along our waterways, policing and monitoring of the city’s claim that they maintain young city trees for the first 5 years while the city only has 2 water trucks that are rarely seen outside of exclusive acreage communities, education of over population’s effects on our resources,I know some religious communities support families that have 5-6 kids, these kids grow up to be consumers and biggest of all these seniors have a city hall that has a for profit land development corporation that promotes acreage communities with miles of asphalt that all taxpayers pay for the building and maintaining of. These communities increase the need for roads and car usage to go get milk. Perhaps you won’t hear much about that? Could it be that many of these seniors’ friends will be driving in from their acreages to attend?
“Kill Canada for 1.27% GHGs” perhaps that could be there rally cry?
Best description yet, National Post, Sunday Sept 29/2024 Conrad Black.
Almost all the advanced western electorates are now in whole or partial revolt against green authoritarianism. The inanity of the war on the internal combustion engine and on both the petroleum and nuclear power industries is now clear to majorities of most advanced countries. We still have no idea of the extent of climate change. Everyone wishes a minimum of pollution and everyone recognizes that vigilance is necessary, but continuing to scramble around like asphyxiated cockroaches trying to reduce our carbon footprint when the principal carbon users (China, India, and Russia), are raising theirs, is increasingly seen for the absurdity that it is.