Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

CLIMATE CHANGE

Concerned Kamloops residents rally around the climate crisis

Jul 29, 2021 | 5:00 PM

KAMLOOPS — As British Columbia prepares for another heatwave, several dozen concerned citizens took to the streets of Kamloops Thursday morning to call attention to the climate crisis. The activists hope their rally helps inspire others to mobilize.

“I’m 88. I’ve got 19 descendants. I’ve realized what I don’t think they’re yet old enough to realize. It’s that they may not live to 100 [years of age] or even close to it,” one speaker told the group.

“We are going to be the ones who inherit this planet, and we need to say something,” 16-year-old Claire Garson says.

From octogenarians to the youth, around 60 people gathered outside the Downtown Kamloops Library Thursday morning to voice their concerns about the climate crisis.

Two and Out

PETERS: Business owners shouldn't be held responsible for nuisance calls

Nov 15, 2024

Looped In

LOOPED IN WITH NIKKI OMEN: November 14, 2024

Nov 15, 2024

Sound Off

SOUND OFF: What is the difference between a food policy council and frontline services?

Nov 15, 2024

“It just seems like this summer has been so unprecedented, with the shattered heat records and now the forest fires that are raging right around us,” rally organizer Margaret Huff says. “It just feels like striking while the iron is hot and I think people are starting to wake up to the fact that we need change.”

The group marched through downtown Kamloops to M.P. Cathy McLeod’s office. (SOUND UP)

They delivered a pledge, asking the Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo MP to commit to making climate change a priority. According to TRU Political Studies Instructor Derek Cook, McLeod and the political party she belongs to won’t be the ones to make that a reality.

“The public needs to vote for politicians who will do something,” Cook says. “Unfortunately, that’s not the Conservative Party, as we see by their plank.”

Cook referenced some literature sent out by McLeod’s office to residents of the riding, that fails to mention the environment. He suggests it will take a significant policy shift to get governments focused on what calls “the existential threat” of climate change.

“We need big money… really big money,” Cook says. “So we need public policies that encourage private sector investment in the trillions of dollars each year into green infrastructure.”

And for that to happen, 16-year-old Claire Garson believes it’s important to have those conversations with people about the urgency of the climate crisis.

“We need to have these conversations. We need to talk about climate change with the people who you know aren’t going to want to hear it,” Garson says. “You need to talk to your grandparents about it. You need to talk to small children and toddlers about it, even if they don’t fully understand it, it needs to be a discussion. Because it is our reality now.”