A GREEN NEW DEAL DIVORCED FROM SOCIAL JUSTICE CONCERNS AND JOBS WILL ONLY APPEAL TO ELITES
Now that the provincial NDP has been ejected from power in Alberta, it needs to think about what set of policies might allow it to return to office in 2023. The debate in the United States between elite, well-off greens and social justice advocates who want to place environmental concerns inside a bigger envelope of concerns about social justice and jobs is one that is already finding an echo in Canada. That debate needs to be expanded. For Alberta, the "what comes next" question is the elephant in the room.
The federal parties that are most green, that is the Greens and the NDP, are so far saying nothing about what they think the feds should do to help create a new Alberta in the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. They open themselves up to the claim from Albertans of all political perspectives that they see us as roadkill as they seek seats elsewhere. The Tories, of course, see no need for a transition from fossil fuels. The Liberals do but have no timetable and no plan, particularly now that the provincial NDP government, which they tacitly supported, has been defeated.
Perhaps none of this is surprising. The provincial NDP government did have a modest plan for transition of the Alberta economy from fossil fuels to renewables that involved using a carbon tax to fund renewables and general revenues to fund economic diversification. It was too radical for most Albertans, it seems, since faith in fossil fuels in Alberta is easily the #1 religion of the province. Too bad then that the rest of the world is losing that religion quickly and all the climate change deniers that the UCP can muster won't affect that.
By 2023, however, the NDP's supposedly radical plan--which didn't look radical at all to environmentalists inside and outside the province--will look too modest because the world is moving away from fossil fuels whatever Tories might think.
In the meantime, however, it is the federal parties that need to have an "Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador chapter" to their platforms. What do these parties plan for our future? Yes, they cannot do that much as long as we have a climate-change-denying Oil Religion provincial government but surely they should be proposing SOMETHING. Alberta is not going to move overnight from Alberta=Oil to Alberta=Many Things with Fossil Fuels Moving Down the List to Eventually Shrink to Near Nothing without some firm, and may I say, radical plans. Perhaps we should hire Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes to help us out???
THEGUARDIAN.COM
No, climate action can't be separated from social justice | Julian Brave NoiseCatElites who divorce climate policy from social justice are almost as out of touch as those who deny climate science altogether
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