It's fitting that in Canada, 2013 would be rung in not with a chorus of Auld Lang Syne, but instead to the sounds and sights of blockades, round dances and the drums of Idle No More. The Indigenous-led movement that is inspiring people around the globe comes after a year of political awakening across Canada -- a year that saw historic mobilizations from the Quebec student movement to Defend Our Coast.
But, the past year has also made the cold math of a warming world even starker. From record setting deadly heat waves, to super storms like Sandy and Bopha, to the unprecedented Arctic and Greenland ice sheet melt, history will remember 2012 as the year the climate changed. That means that 2013 needs to be the year that we bring the warming back home.
That's why the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition is taking a leap of faith and leaving charitable status behind. The decision to move away from charitable status was made because, frankly, we need to take the gloves off when it comes to fighting climate change. We are up against the most powerful and wealthiest industry on the planet, one which spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each day to keep business as usual on track, and to keep the planet warming.
"You can have a healthy fossil-fuel industry or a healthy planet, you can't have both," 350.org founder Bill McKibben said to a packed room at PowerShift Canada before heading out on the Do The Math roadshow across the United States. Since then, as 2012 has wound down, a massive campaign to divest American universities from the fossil fuel industry has taken off. Modeled after South African Apartheid divestment, the campaign is at its core about that one simple truth: the business model of the fossil fuel industry is fundamentally at odds with our planet's health.
The math is deceptively simple. We have 565 gigatonnes of space left in our atmosphere to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, the red line that even the Harper Government has adopted. Meanwhile, the global fossil fuel industry has 2,795 gigatonnes in their proven reserves, and they want to burn each and every ounce of it.
Our job is to stop that.
We're putting our energy into building a movement that can take on the fossil fuel industry, and we're starting on campuses across Canada by joining the fossil fuel divestment movement. Already schools like McGill and the University of Ottawa are working to divest their campuses from dirty energy in Canada, and in its first month in the United States over 192 schools have started up campaigns.
So as 2013 begins, we are setting our own resolution, to work with campuses across Canada to make this year the start of something big in Canada, we hope you'll join us.
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Local and international activists march to demand urgent action to address climate change at the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, Saturday , Dec. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Osama Faisal)
Qatari Women activists holding a banner reading "commit to climate justice 4 all " as they march with local and international activists march to demand urgent action to address climate change at the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, Saturday , Dec. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Osama Faisal)
Local and international activists march to demand urgent action to address climate change at the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, Saturday , Dec. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Osama Faisal)
A man with his son holding a banner reading 'I love the earth' as they march with local and international activists to demand urgent action to address climate change at the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, Saturday , Dec. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Osama Faisal)
Local and international activists march to demand urgent action to address climate change at the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, Saturday , Dec. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Osama Faisal)
Local and international activists march to demand urgent action to address climate change at the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, Saturday , Dec. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Osama Faisal)
QATAR-UN-CLIMATE-WARMING
An activist wearing a costume carries a placard during a rally in Doha on December 1, 2012 to demand urgent action addressing climate change as the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues in the Qatari capital. The chances of hitting the UN's global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said. AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR (Photo credit should read KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images)
QATAR-UN-CLIMATE-WARMING
An activist carries a placard during a rally in Doha on December 1, 2012 to demand urgent action addressing climate change as the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues in the Qatari capital. The chances of hitting the UN's global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said. AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR (Photo credit should read KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images)
QATAR-UN-CLIMATE-WARMING
Activists carry a banner during a rally in Doha on December 1, 2012 to demand urgent action addressing climate change as the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues in the Qatari capital. The chances of hitting the UN's global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said. AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR == QATAR OUT == (Photo credit should read KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images)
QATAR-UN-CLIMATE-WARMING
Activists carry placards during a rally in Doha on December 1, 2012 to demand urgent action addressing climate change as the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues in the Qatari capital. The chances of hitting the UN's global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said. AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR == QATAR OUT == (Photo credit should read KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images)
QATAR-UN-CLIMATE-WARMING
Activists carry placards during a rally in Doha on December 1, 2012 to demand urgent action addressing climate change as the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues in the Qatari capital. The chances of hitting the UN's global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said. AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR == QATAR OUT == (Photo credit should read KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images)
QATAR-UN-CLIMATE-WARMING
An activist carries a placard during a rally in Doha on December 1, 2012 to demand urgent action addressing climate change as the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues in the Qatari capital. The chances of hitting the UN's global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said. AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR (Photo credit should read KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images)
QATAR-UN-CLIMATE-WARMING
An activist lays on a banner during a rally in Doha on December 1, 2012 to demand urgent action addressing climate change as the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues in the Qatari capital. The chances of hitting the UN's global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said. AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR (Photo credit should read KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images)
QATAR-UN-CLIMATE-WARMING
Activists carry a banner during a rally in Doha on December 1, 2012 to demand urgent action addressing climate change as the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues in the Qatari capital. The chances of hitting the UN's global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said. AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR == QATAR OUT == (Photo credit should read KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images)
QATAR-UN-CLIMATE-WARMING
Activists shout slogans and carry placards during a rally in Doha on December 1, 2012 to demand urgent action addressing climate change as the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues in the Qatari capital. The chances of hitting the UN's global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said. AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR == QATAR OUT == (Photo credit should read KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images)
QATAR-UN-CLIMATE-WARMING
Activists carry placards during a rally in Doha on December 1, 2012 to demand urgent action addressing climate change as the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues in the Qatari capital. The chances of hitting the UN's global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said. AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR == QATAR OUT == (Photo credit should read KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images)
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Water should be concern one at present that is something you can make a real difference on.
Fracking our reserves away.
The youth better get busy because those in power are the problem!
http://www.calgarycvo.org/our-work/policy-issues/federal-government/advocacy-rules-charities
Then here, catch.
You'l figure it out later.
There is no problem, only the problem of making a problem out something that does not exist.
The evidence is right outside your door.
True, because that's all we could come up with at the time. But that is not an excuse to keep using them. Fossil fuels are dirty, and there are now cleaner methods of providing energy. But yet, you (the actual one looking 180 degrees backwards) are trying to defend fossils fuels, simply because they are cheap and readily available. But you know what? They are not renewable, they are finite and they will run out. So we can start changing our energy sources now, or wait until fossil fuels run out, we've destroyed the majority of the ecology, and we're rushing to come up with last minute solutions.
PS: I would suggest you research what fracking does to the ecology of a landscape before you praise it's merits.
So by all means bring the warming home.
Being responsible is to care for your neighbour, by allowing him to have access to the one thing that has been conclusively demonstrated to dramatically improve our existence, life expectancy, living standards, health standards, environmental protection, etc., and that is cheap mass energy.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/29/open-climate-letter-to-un-secretary-general-current-scientific-knowledge-does-not-substantiate-ban-ki-moon-assertions-on-weather-and-climate-say-125-scientists/
You will (hopefully) be surprised by the support you receive!