Parry Sound joins Global Day of Climate Action

The Climate Action Parry Sound Federal petition is available, until Thursday closing time, to be signed at White Squall, Georgian Bay Whole Foods, Ogiimaa Cafe, and Pollard’s IDA (ask at the pharmacy counter). Contractors can also find the petition in the lunch rooms at RONA and McNabb’s Home Building Centre.

Friday September 25th will be the 80th week of demonstrations by Climate Action Parry Sound.  Also happening that day is the  Global Day of Climate Action by Fridays for Future.

Climate Action Parry Sound began in  March 2019 as an idea of Parry Sounder Frank Thompson who wanted to do something to support Greta Thunberg and her Fridays For Future school strikes.  Frank planned to sit outside Norm Miller and Tony Clement’s offices on James Street and bring attention to the climate crisis unfolding the world over.  Greta Thunberg had begun a global movement at the age of 15  by leaving school to sit outside the Swedish  Parliament every Friday.  She felt there was no point going to school if she didn’t have a future.  Frank could not sit back and let our young people shoulder this burden alone. A group of Parry Sound friends and supporters began to join Frank  every Friday from 11:30 until 1:30 outside the local constituency offices. 

A petition was started addressed to the Legislature of Ontario asking for our government to take serious action to mitigate climate change. That petition was presented to MPP Norm Miller on November 15th, 2019. and read in the Ontario legislature on December 3, 2019.   In the summer of 2019 a similar petition addressed to the House of Commons/Federal government was begun.  850  signatures were added and a plan was made to present this petition to our MP in April coinciding with other Global Actions during Earth Week.  As we all know that plan was curtailed by Covid 19.  Now the plan is to have 1000 signatures  before September 25th.   Anyone who hasn’t signed and would like to please contact climateactionparrysound@gmail.com or check their website, www.climateactionparrysound.org The wording of the petition is as follows:

***

TO The House of Commons: –

WHEREAS the Government of Canada has signed the 2015 Paris agreement to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2° above preindustrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°; and WHEREAS the Government has since declared a national climate emergency upon becoming aware of the dire consequences in wildfires, flooding and permafrost-melting even at the present increase of only 1°; and WHEREAS climate change is being caused by the accumulated emissions of developed countries for two centuries, yet it disproportionately impacts the poorest people and poorest countries with the least responsibility and fewest resources to mitigate or adapt;

WE the undersigned petition the Government of Canada as follows: –

WE ASK the Government of Canada to immediately focus all its actions through the lens of the declared climate emergency so as to assure that we do more than our strictly numerical share to avoid reaching a 1.5° global temperature increase; and WE ASK the Government to proactively communicate the urgency and fairness of this responsibility to its citizens as it would in a state of war, considering the stakes are as high, or higher.

***

The group has continued to maintain a weekly presence in the street and eventually moved to the lawn at the Mary Street Center. Signs have been placed on the lawn every Friday at 11:30 as well as several  Shoe Strikes have been  held.  Shoe Strikes were also an initiative of Fridays for Future who began placing shoes to represent the people who could no longer gather in large groups in public 

Another group, Climate Action Muskoka, also holds climate protests every Friday in Bracebridge and Huntsville.

At 9:30 am on  September 25th a Covid responsible gathering will be held on the lawn at the Mary Street Center for Community (St. James United Church, corner of James and Mary Street in Parry Sound).  At that time the petition to the House of Commons will be presented to MP Scott Aitchison.

Petitions are available, until Thursday closing time, to be signed at White Squall, Georgian Bay Whole Foods, Ogiimaa Cafe, and Pollard’s IDA (ask at the pharmacy counter). Contractors can also find the petition in the lunch rooms at RONA and McNabb’s Home Building Centre.

Pop-up Greta is such a trooper! She’ll be in our driveway, physical distancing, throughout this quarantined Earth Day. You and your home-schooled kids can also join the Friday’s For Future pop-up strikes every week at the end of your driveway. Remember, online strikes and celebrations are important, but we all know how they can get lost in the bubbles and noise of the digital world. We can’t gather in big crowds anymore, but by using our driveways we can Spread the Climate Action message out in the real world so no one can avoid seeing it! #FightEveryCrisis #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike #ClimateStrikeOnline #DigitalStrike

We are promoting the idea of Friday POP-UP STRIKES. Bring a sign out to the end of your driveway from 11:30 – 12:30 this Friday so passers-by can see that Climate Change is an issue that’s not going away, that in fact the Covid-19 response is teaching us the true meaning of “Emergency” and WE CAN HEAL THE EARTH with the same sense of urgency as we are applying to this pandemic.

How This Works:
From Sue McKenzie at Climate Action Muskoka: “Len and I held a ‘pop-up’ strike at the end of our driveway on a rural District road last week. 116 cars passed in the hour. We just wave at everyone, smile and hold our signs. If this happened in many places – in town or outside of towns, it still keeps the climate file out there in the community. We are hoping this will grow in Muskoka since we have had to shut down in the three towns. We also asked people to [take a picture of] themselves indoors with a climate sign and post to our FB. [Like you at Climate Action Parry Sound] we are also struggling with what else to do to move forward.”

Wildlife is returning to the canals of Venus as tourism scales back in this pandemic. The skies are clearing in Beijing. It’s not that the pandemic isn’t taking a tragic toll on many individuals, and on the capacity of medical systems; it’s that we are getting a taste of what Climate Change disruption will be like, and we are learning that we CAN respond! We can RESET the economy in a matter of months and even weeks!

This is how Climate Action Parry Sound is adapting to the Covid-19 pandemic:

Climate Action takes a three-pronged approach: we maintain a visible presence every Friday 11:30 – 12:30 to remind people the crisis is not going away; all our volunteers have an online presence at all times to provide information and counter misinformation; and we organize larger events locally and contribute to larger actions in the capital cities at appropriate times. But because of the Covid-19 pandemic the larger gatherings are no longer viable, which means our online presence, including virtual strikes, is even more important. Also, our local Friday presence now involves a single volunteer sitting at an information table with disinfecting wipes to clean pens used to sign our petitions. The messaging might be as simple as a large sign inviting motorists to “HONK for NET ZERO THIS DECADE”.

This Friday we will meet at the MPP constituency office on James St. 11:30 – 12:30 pm as usual, but we will have a focus on Solidarity with Wet’suwet’en defenders. If enough people show up, we will march up to Scott Aitchison’s new MP office on Sequin St. which is the proper place to take a federal issue. See You There!

In case you are wandering what the exact connection is between Wet’suwet’en and Climate Change, we can see it this way:

“We trust hereditary chiefs to see farther into the future, and they don’t see pipelines.”