By Jan Mowbray
June 24th, 2019
BURLINGTON, ON
What is a Green New Deal?
It isn’t a plank in the Green Party platform.
“The Green New Deal is an ambitious plan for how we can eliminate poverty and create millions of jobs while tackling the biggest threat of our time: climate change.”
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A small group of people gathered at the Gazebo last Friday afternoon to talk about a new deal needed to manage the changes in our climate.
It involves massive public investment in clean energy, transit and climate adaptation work. But the vision is bigger than that: it’s about transforming our entire economy to be safer and more fair and give everyone a better life.
First proposed in the U.S., the Green New Deal is spreading around the world.”
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Participants put their idea on different coloured cards which became the focus for discussions.
In Canada there are now 178 groups across the country, meeting together, as they did in Burlington last Saturday, to discuss ideas to address a common concern – our changing climate.
Led by Danny Carter, CEO of the Canadian Hemp Farmers Alliance, a group of people came together on Saturday to get information about the New Green Deal.
“In 2006, the Green New Deal Task Force created a Green New Deal; a plan for one hundred percent clean, renewable energy by 2030 utilizing a carbon tax, a jobs guarantee, free college, single-payer healthcare, and a focus on using public programs.
“A Green New Deal rests on two fundamental principles:
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Climate change as we know it now.
• It must be based on knowledge and science and cut Canada’s emissions in half in 11 years.
• It must leave no one behind and create a better present and future for all of us.”
A Green New Deal must lift all of us together. How we address these problems needs to start at Canada’s beginning—the violent displacement of Indigenous peoples from the land—and build out from there.
Its grass roots at its best.The first Burlington meeting was small – they usually are – but they do grow. There wasn’t a politician in sight. That good be good or it could be bad.
There is more information available at:
https://canadians.org/greennewdeal
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/12/21/18144138/green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez
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