Written by Liz Couture
January 22, 2020
Now that the USA has elected Joe Biden, environmentalists are breathing a “cautious sigh” of relief. The disgraced Trump rolled back so many environmental regulations that had been hard-fought for in the past decades, that we were cringing and crying and climate-marching and wondering how to get the rest of the politicians on board. And so now, Biden and his newly appointed and capable, serious team, has the task of revisiting those laws, and placating the people who want to see some climate action. Biden has his work cut out for him, also dealing with the pandemic, the floundering economy, and the uprising of civil unrest.
Biden and Trudeau will likely make a good partnership, maybe even continue their “climate bromance” that started in 2016 but which was abruptly cutoff with the election of Trump. To be sure, there will be much more news to report over the next year as well as in the years to come, and hopefully much of it will be good news about progress on climate change solutions. Trudeau introduced (and passed first reading at the time of this writing) the Canadian Net Zero Emissions Accountability Act (C-12) last November and has put trillions of dollars of commitment out there, and Biden’s campaign has promised pretty much the same thing. There is some concern though, that the US will continue with its protectionist policies in order to encourage jobs there, and that Canada will have to fight harder for its climate transition jobs as a result.
Not all the heavy lifting should be left to the government, though, and fortunately there are many people who are on side with moving Canada and the USA forward with the transition to net zero emissions by 2050, including Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft. Gates was recently interviewed interviewed by the Editor-in-Chief of “The Economist” and he gives a summary of what needs to be done. Many of the concepts have already been explored by “deep green thinkers”, intellectuals who are authors, professors, and entrepreneurs - people like Jeff Rubin, Tom Rand, Marc Jaccard, Lester Brown, and Paul Hawken, to name but a few. Gates understands that trillions of dollars will be needed for a sustainable future, and says “Covid -19 is awful, but climate change could be worse”. At least for Covid-19, a few 10’s of billions of dollars buys the vaccines, but that’s not the case for climate change. The reason that trillions of dollars will be needed is that many solutions are needed because, as Gates says, “climate change is a side-effect of the entire physical economy”.
About the Author
Liz Couture is Lead Organizer for DRAWDOWN Richmond Hill, Lobbyist for Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada, Climate Reality Trained Speaker, Past Green Party of Ontario Richmond Hill Candidate, and a Citizen Stakeholder on Richmond Hill Community Energy and Emissions Plan (CEEP).
About NftP Climate News
The goal of NftP Climate News articles is to highlight 3 to 4 recent news articles on climate change. We want to provide a brief summary to help our members stay up to date on what’s happening climate-wise. Although there can sometimes be a lot of bad news, we are striving to balance this out by including at least one piece of good news.
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