Seniors rally for climate

By Lethbridge Herald on October 2, 2024.

The Raging Grannies perform outside City Hall on Tuesday during a rally about climate change. Herald photo by Al Beeber

Al Beeber – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – abeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

A strong October wind couldn’t deter a group of about 35 people from attending the Seniors for Climate rally outside of City Hall on Tuesday afternoon.

The date of the rally coincided with National Seniors Day in Canada and International Day for Older Persons.

The rally featured performances by the Raging Grannies and numerous speakers including city councillor Belinda Crowson and former NDP MLA for Lethbridge West Shannon Phillips who both gave impassioned talks to the attentive audience.

Opening speaker Mike McCague pointed out the event was not intended to be a protest but rather an educational gathering.

The theme of the rally was “Climate Action Now. ..Later is too Late.”

“The world does not need more successful people, the planet desperately needs more peacemaking” people, healers, restorers, storytellers and others, Crowson said.

She added society needs to redefine successful people.

“Successful people are not the greedy hoarders who make way more money than they’re ever going to need,” Crowson said to applause.

“Successful people are not the ones who rip out everything from the land, ignoring the vulnerable and thinking only of themselves. To me the successful people are the people here today, those who build community, who fight for everyone here and all around the world,” who fight for seniors and youth, she added.

She said humans need to leave the world in a better way than they found it. She said people need to make the world better for future generations.

“All of you here today inspire me. Your caring, concern and commitment is palpable. You also have power – political power, economic power, social power. Use it,” Crowson implored listeners, telling them to use their power when they vote.

“The future needs us, we can’t let them down,” Crowson added.

Three-term MLA Phillips, who was first elected in 2015 and served in various capacities including Minister of Environment and Parks and minister responsible for climate as well as Opposition Finance critic, told the audience there are many ways to fight climate change besides a carbon tax.

Phillips says there has been a demise in the political consensus around the carbon tax there are other ways to address climate change and there should be no despair.

In the U.S. a pollution reduction act has resulted in a half a trillion dollar investment a year and a massive amount of greenhouse gas reduction emissions, Phillips said.

The Alberta NDP, Phillips said, achieved the single largest reduction of pollution in Canadian result because of that government’s efforts between 2015-19.

“It was not the carbon tax that did that,” Phillips added, imploring the audience not to give up on efforts to fight climate change.

“Do not lose faith, do not let them win,” she said of carbon tax opponents.

She said Albertans need to stand up for conservation and wild spaces. And she took a shot at the owner of the company that wants to build a coal mine on the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

Willemijn Appels of Lethbridge Polytechnic talked about the advances in irrigation that are being made, noting that irrigation is a large user of water in southern Alberta with typically about 80 per cent of all water allocated to users from the Oldman and Bow basins being used to put onto land to grow crops.

Farmers who irrigate their land are responsible for producing about 19.4 per cent of the agriculture gross domestic product in the province on only 4.4 per cent of the land base in Alberta.

Irrigation allows the growth of products such as potatoes which wouldn’t survive with the amount of rain in the semi-arid region of southern Alberta, Appels said.

Technologies such as sub surface irrigation have about 95 per cent efficiency compared to traditional pivots which can lose between 50 and 60 per cent of the water they put onto crops, Appels added. But less than one per cent of agriculture land uses that technology, Appels said. 

Similar rallies were being staged across numerous Canadian communities on Tuesday.

“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,” said organizer Barb Phillips last week.