By Pepper Parr
September 26th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
A silent protest.
There they were.
Set out ever so neatly within Civic Square – more than 230 pairs of shoes.
They were part of a silent protest about what we are not doing about climate change.
It was billed as a climate strike inviting everyone in Burlington to join in demanding that all levels of government act immediately on the urgent climate crisis.
The social distancing rules had to be respected. How do you do that?
The people who organized the event identified two places where the shoes could be dropped off. The Rolling Horse Community Cycle in Aldershot and a private home in Millcroft.
Participants were invited to insert a note inside their shoes to convey their message about why urgent action on climate change is important to them.
This was a silent protest. There were no opportunities for speeches or public announcements or political leader photo ops.
After the silent protest the shoes were collected and returned to hosts or donated to a local charity that will distribute them to those in need.
Many of the shoes had notes in them – setting out the wish, hope, aspirations and dreams of those who had walked in those shoes earlier.
Similar Shoe Strikes were to take in Oakville, Milton and Halton Hills; those situations didn’t work out very well.
Oakville found that their plans were upset with the COVID-19 rules on how many people could gather in a group.
Milton ran into bureaucratic problems – the need for a permit and the need for insurance.
Fridays for Future will be co-coordinating similar Climate Strikes throughout Canada. Locally, organizers come from a cross-section of groups: Burlington Biodiversity Team, Students for Change Halton, BurlingtonGreen Youth Network, Burlington Citizens Concerned about Climate Change (BC4), and local residents.
All the while China is building more and more coal fired plants, “more” that all the other planned builds in the world…..combined. Shhhhh..
I believe that using the data supplied by China (which is always suspect and in this case, deliberately understated) the Chinese will increase carbon emissions through to 2030 and by 2 to 3 times the total level of Canadian emissions. Bottom line–carbon emissions will continue to rise if we shut down our economy and opt to freeze in the dark.
Exhibit Two
The greenies utopia of BC–the poster child for the effectiveness of carbon taxes. When implemented by BC in 2007, the goal was to reduce total carbon emissions in that province. By the end of 2019, carbon emissions were as high as they were in 2007. Wow–did those taxes ever achieve the stated goal?!?!
Burlington did it’s part, created an onerous tree bylaw, And we have a carbon tax. With that, we can control the temperature of the planet, by giving money to the government.