Read SCAN! member Gail Greer’s Letter to the Editor, published in The Globe and Mail on January 12, 2023.
Re Federal Liberals’ Just-transition Pledge Is Performative For Party’s Base Far Off Prairies (Jan. 7):
It is sad to see Danielle Smith and her defenders attack proposed federal legislation because it refers to a “just transition” from fossil fuels, which are largely responsible for the climate crisis that has set Fort McMurray and the rest of humanity on fire (when it isn’t drowning or starving us).
Legislation focused on ensuring that workers and communities currently dependent on the production of fossil fuels are not abandoned, but transitioned to more sustainable occupations and industries, surely qualifies as just, alien as that term may be to those who prioritize economic values.
Defenders of business as usual, no matter its consequences for life on this planet, also ignore that the legislation hopefully will address the needs of vulnerable and impoverished consumers of fossil fuels, many the subjects of environmental racism.
Listening to Ms. Smith and her supporters would leave us spinning in the dark.
Gail Greer, Sociologist and environmentalist (retired), Toronto