This article is for the many thousands of individual Canadians who give $-millions each year to environmental and conservation groups.
When it comes to fighting climate change*, you’re not getting your money’s worth. I’ve monitored the environmental movement for five years and draw the conclusion that the biggest and wealthiest groups are seriously letting down the Canadian public with weak and disjointed campaigns.
Unfortunately, groups are never held accountable by institutional donors or media. It’s now up to concerned Canadians to see if you can influence them to do a better job.
(See the bottom of this article to find out how you can help.)
Note: * I’ve decided that the term “climate change” no longer describes the devastation the earth is experiencing. From now on I will use the term “ecological collapse.”
When I wasn’t paying attention, another environmental group – Blue Dot – came into existence, joining the many other large Canadian groups claiming it has the right strategy to help save Canada from environmental devastation.
An initiative of the David Suzuki Foundation, Blue Dot says it “focuses on building a ground-swelling of support to convince Members of Parliament to introduce “a gold-standard federal environmental bill of rights.”
Blue Dot also urges municipalities to adopt a pro-environmental position, and it hopes to pressure Parliament to amend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to include environmental protection.
Hey, this shouldn’t be hard! Just kidding. A dozen or so other groups have been working on the same goals for at least a dozen years with little success.
With only 115,000 individual members – but still growing – and modest funding, I don’t see how Blue Dot can be more effective than any of the others in fighting ecological collapse.
(NOTE: Please support independent journalism. Subscribe button at the end of this article.)
Canada is seriously failing to meet its carbon emission reduction targets. Moreover, a government that claims to be fighting ecological collapse supports development of the tar sands.
“Canada, which represents one half of one percent of the planet’s population,” writes an angry 350.org head Bill McKibben “is claiming the right to sell the oil that will use up a third of the earth’s remaining carbon budget.”
Scientists say that if the world is to hold global warming to below 2 C this century every bit of fossil fuel should remain in the ground. A two-degree increase could spell catastrophe, scientists warn — through drought, ocean rise, crop failure, wildfire, flooding, and disease.
Faced with this frightening information, you would think that the environmental community would be well organized and have effective strategies in place.
Not so.
