I was pleased to learn that my children were expected to take a pair of gloves to school for Earth Day on Monday to help clean up the schoolyard and nearby parks.
These sorts of exercises are beneficial for a number of reasons. It gets the students off of screens, which are becoming increasingly common not just at home but in the classroom as well. It reminds them that they’re not above “dirty work” and that it’s important to chip in. It’s a reminder that spring cleaning is a thing, and extends to the broader community beyond just your own home and backyard.
It was also nice to see environmental advocacy that is non-partisan and largely apolitical. Cleaning up our neighbourhoods unites people at a time when a lot of the other initiatives only divide.
In the past, some Ontario school kids have been assigned projects on Greta Thunberg, where they have to colour pictures of her or do presentations on her outlandish statements. This is propaganda and does little to teach kids about the natural world. Let’s hope this kind of activism in the classroom is disappearing.
It’s not just the classroom where we need to pivot our approach to environmental issues, though. We need it even more so from adults and, particularly, our political leadership.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has spent the bulk of his political capital obsessively clinging to the much-loathed carbon tax. It’s tearing the country apart and causing a national unity crisis.
While carbon tax opposition is understandably at a fever pitch right now, with most of Canada’s premiers calling for it to be axed, don’t forget Trudeau fought several provinces on the matter in the Supreme Court back in 2018.
Think of all the money, time, and fraught emotions that have gone into the carbon tax battle. And what has it accomplished?
Trudeau’s own government has issued reports detailing how Canadians’ per capita greenhouse gas emissions are actually going down. The only reason that total emissions have gone up slightly is because the population has increased. Reports also confirm that the cause of our drop in emissions is improved technology due to private sector innovation. The carbon tax itself has done nothing for the environment.
The Liberals could have focused on more unifying environmental initiatives, like their underperforming tree-planting project, to have brought people together. They could have involved schools, community groups, and other voluntary associations. It could have been a feel-good project that saw people of different political viewpoints working alongside each other.
Instead, the current tone of the environmental movement is to focus on vilification—to target individuals, sectors and organizations for alleged wrongdoing and make them atone for their supposed sins. This is ultimately what the carbon tax is all about.
A similar thing is playing out at a United Nations Environment Programme meeting taking place in Ottawa this week. Several thousand delegates from 175 countries are attending to discuss the issue of plastics pollution.
While the issue of responsibly managing plastic waste is a legitimate concern, the activist rhetoric around these issues risks vilifying an entire sector and the many benefits it provides to our society and the economy.
A Canadian federal court has already ruled that the Trudeau Liberal government went too far in labelling plastic items as toxic in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The plastics industry provides many necessities of life, such as hospital supplies, safety equipment for our kids, food packaging, and more.
The other day I was having coffee with a friend who spoke about his desire to bring about positive change in his community. He said he’d begun picking up garbage around town because that’s at least one thing where he knows he can have a direct impact and see the results immediately. It’s a simple but powerful message.
The phrase “big government makes for small citizens” is also applicable to environmental activism. The people who sit at home making social media posts about their support for the carbon tax aren’t actually doing anything for the environment. What they’re really doing is abdicating personal responsibility and initiative by kidding themselves that a magical tax will solve everything.
Let’s hope future generations spend more time picking up trash and planting trees than getting into online fights over government fees and regulations.
