JOLEE-Power-Edition-2020

FUTURE ON THE EDGE —————————————————————————————
le Futur sur le bord| Futuro en el borde | ZukunFt auF dem rand | 未 来 的 边 缘
A Green New Deal
By Dr. Rose A. Dyson
Toronto – Canada
Greta Thunberg, a seventeen-year-old Swedish girl,
just may be saving the world. Her fierce rebuke of
world leaders, whom she accused of stealing her
future at the 2019 UN General Assembly gathering
in New York City in September of 2019, was
backed by millions of young people all over the
world marching in protest and demanding greater
action on climate change. Her month-long climate
strike, refusing to go to school, has, on a global
basis, inspired youth to endorse the key question
she asks, “Why should we be studying for a future
that soon will be no more, and when no one is
doing anything whatsoever to save it?” With her
clarion call to action, the eleven-year deadline set
by the International Panel on Climate Change
earlier this year, has received a badly needed boost
of support and kindled a renewed sense of urgency
that more must be done if we are to meet the 2015
Paris Accord targets set to hold the earth’s
temperature increase to 1.5C.
Cities all over the world are declaring the climate
crisis an emergency. On October 2, 2019, Toronto
followed Montreal and Amsterdam, adopting a
series of transformative strategies. Hospitals,
universities, schools and developers have all pledged
to work with the city in fighting climate change.
Aggressive new targets have been set to reach
carbon neutral status, where emission reductions
and offsets equal or exceed production, and it is
expected that both the provincial and federal
governments will step in to help. With his “Green
Ways Initiative”, Toronto Mayor John Tory has
committed the city to become carbon neutral by
2050 and left the door open for an acceleration of
that deadline to 2040.
In his recent book, “The Trudeau Formula”,
Canadian investigative journalist Martin Luckas
explains how the Leap Manifesto, first proposed at
a New Democratic Party Convention in 2016, has
morphed into a Green New Deal advocated on
both sides of the 49th parallel. In the United
States, Democratic candidates campaigning for the
2020 presidential election have been especially
quick to recognize the public’s growing appetite for
real, meaningful change. The dots between the
overlapping crises of racism, inequality and
ecological collapse have become increasingly
difficult to ignore. Just maybe, a new,
transformative, cross-border political agenda is
beginning to take shape.
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