Recognize that we are meeting on the unceded territory
of the Sinixt people.
Thank you, Wayne, for taking the time to be here to
listen to our Nelson community and to take a meaningful part in forming climate
policy for Canada.
I’m David Boyd and I’m the minister at Nelson United
Church. I’ve been part of the United
Church all my life and I can say that the United Church has been involved in
advocating for climate justice for over 30 years. As a spiritual community, we’ve understood
our connection to the land and the sacred dimension of all life. We’ve tried to live out and advocate the
belief that as we do to the land we do to ourselves.
I inherited my political activism from my parents who
were involved in working with and alongside Haida, Gitxan, Ojibway and
Vancouver Island 1st Nations.
My early influences were elders from the Gitxan and Ojibway communities.
I’m also Scots Celtic and so I learned from these
influences right from birth that the earth is in me and I am of the earth, and
that we are part of a sacred web of life.
My parents were politically engaged with respect to 1st
Nations rights in Canada and the cold war.
I grew up with some anxiety about the fate of the world should the cold
war ever become hot and boil into World War 3.
My parents actively worked to make sure that didn’t happen. I cut my political engagement teeth in school
advocating for peace.
As the Cold War was to my parents’ age, climate change
is to our own. We are at a critical
moment with the Doomsday Clock once again inching toward midnight! And that makes me frightened.
As much as I represent the United Church and my own
love of this earth, I’m speaking as a father this evening and as a grandfather hoping
to be. I have 4 children, 3 of whom are
in their 30’s and 1 in her mid-20’s. They have not children and to be frank, my
wife and I are not sure we want to be grandparents; we worry about a world where
the very real potential for climate disaster is present, especially if we
cannot stay under 2 degrees Celsius of warming; many climate experts are
suggesting that we cannot.
As someone who wants to be a grandfather, these are
the things that are important to me with respect to Canadian policy: ensure
that we keep the global rise in temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius; set a meaningful
price—not a token price—on carbon; reduce carbon pollution to levels that will
ensure we do not go above 1.5 degrees; end all and any carbon trading; stop tar
sands production; no fracking of any kind; create a national policy with
respect to ending clear-cut logging and protecting our forests; keep the
reserves of fossil fuels in the ground, set out policy to get to a 100% renewable
energy economy by 2035; recognize the rights of indigenous peoples with respect
to pipelines and territory; ensure that trade agreements do NOT HAVE priority
over climate justice agreements.
As part of our national climate justice policy, I also
believe that we need to help fossil fuel industry workers be retrained, ensure
that climate change solutions are not built on the backs of the poor in Canada
or around the world, and ensure that developed countries like Canada take
responsibility for the carbon pollution that we have unleashed into the
atmosphere.
These last words are the words of Richard Wagamese, an
Ojibway writer from Northwestern Ontario where I grew up. These words are from his book, “One Story,
One Song”:
“The Old Ones say that
humility is the foundation of everything.
Nothing can exist without it.
Humility is the ability to see yourself as an essential part of
something larger. It is the act of
living without grandiosity. Humility, in
the Ojibway world means “like the earth.””
The planet is the epitome of a humble being, with everything allowed the
same opportunity to grow, to become.
Without the spirit of humility there can be no unity, only discord. Humility lets us work together to achieve
equality. Humility teaches that there
are no greater or lesser beings or things.
There is only the whole. There is
only the great, grand clamour or our voices, our spirits, raised together in
song.” (Page 9.)
