This website will make you aware of just how dire the our situation is with regard to the Climate Crisis. You can go to this tab by clicking here to see the challenges we face right now: What is our current situation?

This website will also give you a clearer vision of what needs to be done to address the Climate Crisis, and what you can do about it. 

The primary cause of the Climate Crisis is pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.  We need to stop doing this. Yes, there are other causes: methane leaks from the extraction of oil and gas by fossil fuel companies, and from abandoned and orphaned oil wells left by fossil fuel companies, methane produced by animal agriculture and thawing permafrost, to name a few. But our number 1 priority has to be to stop the pollution caused by burning fossil fuels. 

Here are some of the things that we can do.

Talk about the Climate Crisis with family and friends.

Katharine Hayhoe says the most important thing that we can do about the Climate Crisis is to talk about it, because unless we talk about it, we won’t do anything about it. Who is Katharine Hayhoe? She is a Canadian and a renowned atmospheric scientist currently working for Texas Tech University. In 2019, she was named the United Nations Champion of the Earth. She has a website, numerous youtube videos on climate change, and has written a book called Saving Us,  In 2020, she participated in ClimateFast’s online Earth Day webcast. Here is the short video clip (2:09) from that webcast. Here is the longer TED talk youtube video (17:12) that she mentions. 

There are several organizations promoting programs to help you talk about our Climate Crisis. Here are several of them, the Week, Project Neutral’s Talk Climate to Me and Carbon Conversations Toronto.

We need to electrify everything.

The graphic below provides a visual as to what this means with regard to your home. This document provides more detail: Electrify Everything in your home. Although this is American-based, it is still applicable in the Canadian context.

Right now, there are federal rebates available when you purchase an Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV). Take advantage of them, if you can. The federal rebate for heat pumps in Ontario has been discontinued.

When you install a heat pump or buy an ZEV, it has an influence on your family, friends, and neighbours, according to this article written by MIchael J. Coren published in the Washington Post.

We need to keep our electricity green and pollution-free!

The Ontario Government under Doug Ford wants to build fossil gas plants to generate our electricity. Some cities and townships are fighting this throughout Ontario currently. Fortunately, the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) for Ontario is changing their direction starting in 2024 will be soliciting bids for cheap, clean, pollution-free renewable energy, as reported by the Toronto Star on December 12, 2023.

We need to stop the pollution from burning fossil fuels! We need to stop extracting and producing fossil fuels!

The connection between the extraction, production, and burning of fossil fuels, and the Climate Crisis is clear. The more we extract, produce, and burn fossil fuels, the more pollution in the form of CO2 and methane is produced, the thicker the CO2/methane blanket that covers the earth gets, and the hotter our climate gets. Climate scientists, the Pope, the United Nations, among many others have been saying that we need to stop the pollution from producing and burning fossil fuels.

At COP28 that took place in the United Arab Emirates in December of the year, 2023, finally, for the first time, the United Nations agreed that we need to transition away from fossil fuels in our energy systems, as reported in the Globe & Mail. Though there were no amounts, timeframe, or schedule set out, it signified the recognition that we need to move away from fossil fuels.

We need to stop subsidizing fossil fuel companies! Polluters should pay. Instead, we should be using these funds to invest in renewable energy and infrastructure.

Both the Canadian federal government and provincial governments are providing subsidies to fossil fuel companies so they can pollute. This article by CBC News explains the situation with regard to fossil fuel subsidies in Canada. These funds could be used instead to invest in renewable energy such as wind turbines, solar farms, geothermal, and tidal energy.

We need to keep our carbon fee and dividend, also known as the carbon tax, a misnomer as we actually receive a dividend or rebate. 

Putting a fee on carbon pollution is meant to incentivize people, businesses, and industry to decrease the pollution that they produce, and look for alternatives to producing it. In Canada, we receive a Climate Action Incentive Payment on a quarterly basis. Here is an article from the Globe & Mail that talks about the ‘carbon tax’.

The US-based Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) has produced this video to explain how the carbon fee and dividend works (1:39). Share it with others if you can. This is the website of the Canadian chapter of CCL.

We need to understand that fossil fuel companies are engaging in greenwashing, advertising campaigns to convince Canadians that they are doing everything they can to get to net zero. Don’t be fooled, they are not.

Fossil fuel company alliances and organizations such as the Pathways Alliance and the Modern Miracle Network want to continue to continue to pollute by expanding oil and gas exploration, extraction, and production. They want the federal government to fund their Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) projects that are expensive, not proven to scale, and have been panned by the International Energy Agency in this article by Global News.

We need to understand that Canadian banks are some of the biggest investors in fossil fuels world wide, as reported in Banking on Climate Chaos.

The Royal Bank of Canada was the largest investor in fossil fuels in 2022 world wide as reported by the Toronto Star. The other Big Five Canadian banks are no better.

We can switch from one of the Big Five banks to a climate-friendly, alternative financial institution. There is the Bankswitch campaign by the Climate Pledge Collective that can help you in doing this.

We need to understand that Canadian mainstream media, including the CBC, could be doing a better job in reporting on the Climate Crisis.

Most Canadian mainstream media fails to tell Canadians how dire the Climate Crisis is, and connect the dots with regard to the Climate Crisis and the pollution produced by the extraction, production, and burning of fossil fuels. This report, Quiet Alarm – A Review of CBC’s Climate Reporting, talks about the state of CBC’s climate reporting. There is an organization called Covering Climate Now that is dedicated to helping ‘our news media colleagues cover the defining story of our time with the rigor and urgency it deserves’. We need to ask our news media organizations to join it.

There are other ways to keep yourself better informed with regard to the Climate Crisis. 

We need to understand that Big Agriculture, and particularly, animal agriculture, are big contributors to the Climate Crisis. 

Food waste is another contributor to methane production.

If we can encourage regenerative agriculture, reduce our meat and dairy consumption, and reduce food wastage, we can help to lessen their impact on the Climate Crisis.

We need to ensure that our pension funds and investments are not being used to fund the Climate Crisis such as funding fossil fuel companies.

Shiftaction is an NGO that enables you to tell your pension fund to not invest in polluting fossil fuel companies.

We need to understand that it is our unsustainable consumption that is the root cause of the Climate Crisis.

We need to buy less, buy what we need, not what we want. Buy from sustainable companies and stores. We need to reduce/waste less water, food, and energy. Watch The Story of Stuff video (21:16). This is the Story of Stuff website.

If you are having any difficulty in dealing with the Climate Crisis, then go to this tab, Dealing with Eco-Anxiety.

Now, take action! Click on any of the above tabs and see what to do next.

If you have any suggestions as to what could be added to the above, please let me know via the contact tab.